The Ultimate Guide to Google Ads & Types of Google Ads

Every second, there are almost 2.3 million searches on Google, and you will find Google Ads on every search engine result page (SERP). Google Ads can be very effective way of driving qualified traffic to your website. It reaches to the exact people who are searching for the types of products or services you offer. And from 2004, search for term “What is Google Ads or Google AdWords?” has been continuously increasing and more businesses keep coming online. In this blog, we will see what is Google Ads & types of Google Ads.

What is Google Ads?

Google offers advertisements which appear in search results on Google.com with the help of Google Ads. Google Ads is an online advertising service provided by Google to help Digital marketers reach their consumers instantly. Google Ads was formerly known as Google AdWords.

When someone searches on Google for a particular term, say ‘Property for sale’, Google would show a list of results. But if you look closely, you will notice that the top and the bottom results are generally ads which are denoted with a green “Ad” label. Next thing you will thinking is that how did Google know which ads to display? This has been sorted with types, so let’s see the types of ads in Google Ads in detailed.

Types of Ads in Google Ads

1. Search Ads

When a user searches for something on Google, the list of results appear on SERP which consists of ads and organic listing. The result denoted with word “Ad” in an SERP which is in text format and just look alike organic listings is known as Search Ads. This type of ad mostly appears at top or bottom of search engine result page. For example, when a user searches for “best digital marketing courses”, the search results will look something like this.

The result from the SERP marked with word “Ad” is search ad. And, the results below that are organic. 

Google considers many factors before displaying which ad to display first, as well as the sequence of ads. Some of the important factors in search ads are as follows:

Targeting – Your ads will be shown in the locations that you choose. You can select any country, state, city or zip code you want to target. Also for user convenience Google Ads also shows the number of targeted audience in your selected area while selecting.

Search Term & Keyword – You can check what is being searched for your related product or service by the user and also, the keywords that you optimize the ad for.

Ad Copy Relevance – Ads that appear for a specific search term should be relevant and useful to audience. Users search should not mislead him. A search for Digital Marketing should not display results for colleges.

Landing Page Experience – How relevant and useful is your landing page to what the searcher wanted in result.

Conversion Rate – This totally depends on relevance, landing page experience & quality content.

Bidding – Assume if 2 advertisers have perfect ads and landing pages, then who have set higher bid will get first preference over the other.

2. Display Ads

Have you ever noticed? While you are reading a blog or a post on some website, you see ads in lot of different places on the page, and in different sizes. These are called as display ads. There are number of factors like keywords, placements, re-marketing, audience interests, etc. Google decides to show those ads to you. These ads can only appear on advertising-supported websites and not on all websites.

There are some important targeting criteria, based on which Google places the display ads on websites which are as following:

Keywords – The ads are showed on website based on the keywords. For example, let’s assume the keyword for the ad is “Digital Marketing”, then Google will only display ads on websites that have Digital marketing related content.

Topic – There are various specific topics on Google Ads, under which all websites are grouped. For example, websites related to education will be listed under the topic ‘education.’

Placements – You can choose the websites on which you want your ads to appear is termed as a placements. Add the websites where you want to show the ads on, in place of keywords. For example, if you want to show your ads on any educational related websites, then look for advertising supported educational websites ad add them to your targeting.

Remarketing – This technique helps you to reconnect with your existing website visitors. You can 

target the website visitors who have come to your website but have not taken any action by re-marketing the product or service they showed interest in.

3. Shopping Ads

If you are retailer, this ad type is suitable for you as it will increase the traffic to your website and helps in generating quality leads. Which will also, result in increase of sales.

Requirements for running shopping ads:

- Create an account with Google Merchant Center. It is a platform for retailers where they can upload all their product listing in a specific format.

- Create an account on Google Ads & link it with Google Merchant Center.

- Now as both the tools are linked together, shopping ads take all the product details from Google Merchant  Center, matches the search query of the user and displays if found relevant.

- Also, keep in mind that you have to submit updated product listing and details every 30 days to Google Merchant Center.

4. Video Ads

This type of ad lets advertisers run video ads on YouTube and any other Google Networks.

The 3 main advantages of running video ads are:

Better targeting – You can reach to right audience as this ad type provides keyword, demographic, location, interest and device targeting.

This ad type has demographic, location, interest, keyword and device targeting which helps you reach the right audience on YouTube and Google Display Network.

More reach – YouTube has 30 million daily active users. Additionally, video ads are also available on other Google Display Networks. This means that you have large number of audience.

Measurable – You cannot get insight reports for the ads that displayed on TV, but for video ads displayed on YouTube and other Google display network you can get all the necessary metrics like views, engagement, clicks, reach, performance etc.

5. App Promotion Ads

This ad type is very helpful for businesses with a mobile app. Advertiser can promote the mobile app of business on search, display, Play store, YouTube and many more platforms. Google Ads uses ad text and other required details from your app store listings. Advertiser has to fix budget, starting bid, languages and locations for the ad.

These are all various types of Google Ads which will help you to grow your businesses rapidly. So now you can strategize your Google Ad Campaign as per your product or services & get good returns.