Google Discovery Ads: the Essentials

Google Discovery Ads is an advertising format that allows you to reach a wide audience in various places on the Internet. We don’t use ready-made graphic ads to run this type of campaign. Instead, we give Google Ads resources which the system mixes to create visuals tailored to use needs. Discovery Ads are ads based largely on self-learning algorithms which analyze the behavior of recipients and display the creative content to those who are most likely to be interested in a given service or product at a given moment. Where exactly can you see Discovery Ads and how to create them?

Google Discovery Ads – Locations

Discovery Ads reach 3 billion Internet users. At the same time, this format allows for a very precise selection of the target group – we can direct the ads to groups of recipients with specific behaviors, demographic features and interests, but also to lists of recipients created by us. Users can see our ads during their daily online activities, thanks to which information about a product or service reaches them at each stage of the customer purchase path. Google Discovery Ads are displayed in places such as:

• Discover tabs – these are tabs in the browser where Google displays personalized news to the user, tailored to their interests, based on previous online activity,
• in Gmail – Discovery Ads have replaced traditional ads in Gmail. Currently, they are the only way to show promoted content to recipients in “Offers” and “Communities” tabs,
• on YouTube – on the platform’s homepage or in the “Worth watching” section.

In Google Discovery Ads, the system selects the best display spots itself for a particular ad. It also adjusts rates for it and adjusts its size to the place of emission and size of the device on which it’s displayed.

What’s Included in Google Discovery Ads?

As we’ve already mentioned, Discovery Ads is a type of creative content in which the system itself assembles the ad from available elements. Therefore, before we launch this type of campaign, it’s necessary to provide the system with the appropriate resources. These are:

• headlines – a maximum of 5 titles, each for no more than 40 characters,
• descriptions – a short presentation of the product or service and the benefits of buying it. You can add 5 descriptions, each for up to 90 characters,
• business name,
• business logo,
• images in horizontal rectangle and square format. There can be a maximum of 15 of them,
• Final URL – subpage address to which the user will be redirected after clicking the ad,
• CTA – call to action. They should be selected from the list offered by the system.

It’s not necessary to use all the available images, headlines or ad texts, but it’s worth remembering that the more resources you make available, the greater the chance that the system will find effective connections for given recipients.

Images in this type of ads can be displayed in different ways, so it’s best not to include logos or subtitles. These elements will be pulled from other resources that will be uploaded to the campaign creator. It’s also worth making sure that all headlines, descriptions and images match each other. We do not know in which configurations they will be displayed, so it’s important to make sure that in each possible configuration they create a coherent message.  

Automated Discovery Campaigns – What Do They Give and Take Away?

Google Discovery Ads, as a campaign type optimized almost exclusively by self-learning algorithms, doesn’t allow some of the features known from other Google Ads formats. We can’t, among other things, set targeting to destinations or devices, limit the number of impressions for a given recipient or exclude inappropriate contexts. But do these limitations make us waste our budget? On the contrary, the system is already so efficient that it doesn’t display ads in inappropriate contexts threatening the brand or bombard the recipient with the same ad dozens of times a day. What’s more, it has so much information about viewers’ behavior and preferences that it can almost always choose display parameters much better than a human.

Additionally, Discovery Ads offers the option of automatic ad targeting – after enabling this option, the system itself expands the group of recipients with new ones who are most likely to benefit from the offer. It’s not mandatory to enable this type of targeting, but it often provides significant benefits, especially when the ad has been online long enough to exhaust the potential of remarketing lists.

Discovery Ads – Why’s It Worth it?

• wide reach – Discovery campaigns can potentially reach billions of people all over the world, in various places on the web,
• precise targeting – this format offers many possibilities of selecting target groups, including targeting at non-standard lists of recipients and automatic targeting so you can reach new, promising recipients,
• modern multimedia format – Discovery Ads are ads adjusted to the needs of today’s users. They do not have a rigidly specified content, they adjust to the size of the device and place of display and display the product or service exactly when the user is looking for it,
• using the budget to the maximum – thanks to the intelligent determination of rates the system can precisely manage the budget. This, combined with a well-chosen group of recipients, prevents over-budgeting,
• saving time – the system automatically optimizes the campaign so we don’t have to waste time manually changing the settings. Of course, this doesn’t relieve us from watching the campaign and monitoring its results.

Google Discovery Ads is a type of advertising that is definitely worth getting to know. It’s a great complement to other formats such as responsive search ads, Google Display Network ads or YouTube Ads. If you want to use this type of campaign to promote your brand, check out our offer subpage!