Understanding Google Ads that was known as Google AdWords will be the most profitable decision you will make for your business.

Google owns nearly seventy-five percent of the Search engine market share. People turn to the platform to search millions of times a day for all their search needs. This means every second there are over 2 million searches happening.

That is a lot of opportunities to get your company brand in front of people increasing web traffic, conversions, leads, and sales.

Let me show what Google Ads are, how they work, and how to set up a successful campaign for your company.

What are Google Ads?

Google Ads is a paid advertising platform offered by Google.  Used to be called Google AdWords and they rebranded the service to Google Ads in 2018.

It is simple to use when users search keywords, they get the results of their query on the search results page. Those results can include paid advertisers’ ads that target that keyword.

Here is an example, here are the results for the search term “leather jackets”.

By the search term used is a product I would like to buy, Google returned some product advertisements from different merchants for me to consider.

This picture above shows the advertisements that are on top of the search results and almost look the same as organic search results.

This is excellent for advertisers due to the first results on Google that will get the vast majority of the traffic for search queries.

How does Google Ads work?

Google Ads operates as a pay-per-click platform. The way it works is easy. The marketers target specific keywords on Google and make bids on that keyword and compete with other companies on that target keyword.

The bids you make are “maximum bids” or the maximum you are willing to pay for your ad.

For example, if your maximum bid is $6 and Google determines that your cost per click is $3, then you get the ad placement, and if they determine that it is more than $6 you will not get the ad placement.

Instead, you can set a maximum daily budget for your ad. You will never spend more than that specific amount for that ad per day, which will help you get a better sense of how you should budget for your digital ad.

Marketers have 3 options for their bids:

• Cost per click: This is how much you will pay for each click on your ad.
• Cost per mille: This is how much you pay per 1,000 ad impressions.
• Cost per engagement: This is how much you pay when a user performs a specific action on your ad.

Quality Score

Google takes the bid amount and pairs it with an assessment of your ad that is called Quality Score. Google defines the quality score as an estimate of the quality of your ad, keyword, and landing pages. Higher quality ads may lead to lower prices with better ad positions.

The score number can be between 1 and 10, with 10 being the better score. The higher your score is the better you will rank and the less you will spend on converting.

Ad Rank

Your quality score combined with your bids creates your ad rank, the position your ad will appear in the Google search results page.

When a user sees the ad and clicks on it, the advertiser pays a small fee for that click.

The idea is the more users that click on a marketer’s advertisement, the more likely they will accomplish their advertisement goals of becoming a new lead or making a sale.

Now that you have learned how Google ads work, let me show you the different types of Google ads you can use for your marketing campaign.

What Are the Types of Google Ads?

Google gives the advertisers a variety of different campaign types and all the campaigns fall into two categories, Search network or Display network.

Search Network

The ads that appear in the text in your search results page for the target keyword is search network.

For example, the image below is the search network ads for the keyword phrase “leather jackets”.

These ads are the ones you are probably familiar with. They will appear on the search result page with the Green Ad symbol. The text-based ads are not the only type of ads in the search network. The ads can also appear in Google Shopping.

Google Shopping ads appear as images on the returned search result page as shown below.

There are some benefits to using both. If you have a physical product, Google shopping ads can get leads by showcasing your product directly to the customers.

Display Network

Display Network will allow your ad to be shown on Google partner websites that will display your ad on different websites. There are a variety of different ways your ad will appear.

The ads can appear as banner advertisements on Google Partner websites on top of their webpages or blog post, sidebar, or even in the partner’s page content.

If you have videos, these video ads can appear also on partner websites as pre-roll YouTube videos.

Google will let you advertise your ad on its email platform in Gmail. You may already use Gmail and have noticed the advertisements on top of your emails.

Lastly, your ad can appear in third-party apps through Google’s app network.

Benefits of Using Display Network Ads!

There are some benefits to using the Display Network. Google partners with over 2 million websites and reaching more than ninety percent of all internet users to help ensure your ads get in front of the most people as possible.

The ads themselves are flexible in terms of style. Your ad can be Image, Video, GIF, or Text.

Yet, they do not come without their downsides. Your ads might appear on websites you do not want them to or in front of videos that you do not want your company brand associated with.

If you are careful about where you are putting your ads, the Display Network can be an excellent place to collect leads.

Now that you have learned about the types of ads you can create with Google, let us talk about the cost.

Google Ads Cost

The cost of your ad will be determined by the quality of your site and how much you are bidding. So, the cost of your ad is going to vary from each ad.

To understand how much Google ads are going to cost you, need to understand the ad auction system.

Remember as discussed above the ad rank determines where Google will place your ad, and this is where the system comes in. When a user searches a keyword phrase you are targeting, Google jumps into auction mode and compares your ad rank with every other marketer that is targeting that keyword phrase.

It does not just take a big ad budget with large maximum bid amounts to rank well. Google Ad Auction and Rank system favors websites that will help most users with a high quality score over the lower score ones.

Your CPC might be lower than a huge well-known company with a large ad budget because your advertisement was better quality.