Search engine advertising isn't just for global players. Due to cost-efficient billing models and control functions, this branch of online marketing offers small and medium-sized companies and freelancers in particular the opportunity to reach a large audience with a manageable advertising budget.

 Google is the market leader in Search Engine advertising (SEA). With its "Ads" advertising platform, the US company offers advertisers the opportunity to manage campaigns for the search engine and to add multimedia ads to the Google Display Network.

What is Google Ads?

With ads, the company Google Inc. offers a central tool for search engine advertising. Within a few years, the Internet platform has developed into the largest online advertising network in the world and provides customers with various ad formats in the search engine and on third-party sites.

Ad formats in the search engine

Google Ad enables advertisers to place text ads on Google's search results pages, as well as on Google Play, Google Shopping ads, and other Google services platforms. These appear in Google search results pages (SERPs) above and below organic web search results. In addition, Google Ads cooperates with various other search services.

• Text ads: Google text ads for the search engine consist of a headline with a maximum of 25 characters, two lines of text with 35 characters each, and an ad URL, which does not necessarily have to match the linked URL.

Ad formats on the google display ads

Google Ads' sphere of influence is not limited to the search engine. Because the Google Display Network also enables Ads customers to place ads on Google websites such as Google Finance, Gmail, Blogger, and YouTube, as well as on various third-party sites. In addition to text ads, advertising customers also have access to multimedia ad formats.

• Image ads: Banner advertising in the Google Display Network is based on standardized image formats that are tailored to various page elements on a website. You can find an overview of the available formats here.

• Rich media ads: Rich media ads are image ads that contain interactive elements such as call-to-action buttons or product carousels in the form of HTML, Flash, and video ads.

• Video ads: Ads provide advertisers with two flavors of video ads on the Google Display Network and YouTube: TrueView In-Stream and TrueView In-Display. TrueView in-stream ads are served before, after, or during a video on YouTube or a third-party site. TrueView in-display ads appear whenever internet users search for video content via a web search or YouTube.

How Google Ads works

The declared goal of the Google advertising network is to place advertising that is as relevant as possible. For this reason, Google Ads campaigns are keyword-based. If an Internet user enters certain search terms in the Google search field, the search engine automatically displays ads that match the keywords used on the SERPs.

 Keywords also play a role in the Google Display Network, as they enable the advertising platform to align ads thematically with the publisher's website. If advertisements from several Ads customers are available for an online advertising space, an auction procedure decides which advertiser will be awarded the contract.

Keywords

The idea behind Google Ads is to place advertisements in such a way that they are not perceived as annoying, but sometimes even offer the user added value. Each ad can be assigned keywords that are thematically related to the advertising message. Keywords can be a single term or entire groups of words, so-called keyword phrases.

 Typically, advertisers choose keywords in their ads that potential customers use to find the products or services they are promoting. Keyword research is therefore at the heart of a successful Google Ads campaign. To find out which keywords are used most frequently to search for certain offers, Google has used the keyword planner free research tool integrated into Ads.

 This enables advertisers to find new keywords for their ads, assess their use for their own campaign using statistics and traffic forecasts, and set the advertising budget. This related article provides more information about google ads keyword planner.

Ad auction

Google decides which ad is displayed for an advertising-relevant keyword based on a so-called ad auction, which is carried out every time a user enters a search phrase in the search engine or calls up a partner site in the Google Display Network. During this auction process, ad rank is determined. This determines whether an ad is displayed and the order in which ads appear on a page. The main factors in determining Ad Rank are an ad's bid and its Quality Score. The rank of search engine ads is also influenced by optional ad extensions.

• Ad bid: With the ad bid, an advertiser specifies how much they are willing to pay for an ad on the search engine or display network. The effective cost of an ad is often less than the advertiser's bid.

• Quality Score: The Quality Score reflects the relevance of an ad and the website linked to it for the user of the search engine or the visitor of a partner site. This factor is given in the form of a value from 1 to 10 and can be viewed in the Ads account. A high-Quality Score can reduce google advertising cost.

• Ad extensions: Text ads in the search engine can be supplemented with optional elements such as telephone numbers or links to specific subpages of a website. This is called ad extensions. If the ads system determines that such an ad extension increases the ad performance and thus increases the added value for the user, this evaluation is included in the determination of the ad rank.

Cost

To determine the cost of an ad campaign in Google Ads, there are three bid strategies to choose from. Advertisers can decide for themselves whether they want to focus their campaign on clicks, impressions, or conversions.

• CPC (cost-per-click): With the cost-per-click bidding strategy, advertisers only pay when users click on their ad. To do this, a maximum CPC bid is set in Ads. The actual amount to be paid for a click on the ad may be less than the maximum CPC depending on the quality of the ad. Search engine advertising is usually billed according to the cost-per-click model.

• CPM (cost-per-mille): When an advertiser chooses a cost-per-mille bidding strategy for campaigns on the Google Display Network, the cost of advertising the ad is based on the impressions (or views) generated. With the maximum CPM, advertisers set the maximum amount they are willing to pay for 1000 impressions of an ad. This bid strategy is only available to advertisers for Google Display Network campaigns.

• CPA (cost-per-acquisition): This bidding strategy focuses on specific actions that visitors take after clicking an ad on the linked website. With the CPA bid, an advertiser determines what he is willing to pay when it comes to the corresponding actions. The cost-per-acquisition model is recommended for experienced ad clients who want to increase the conversion rate on their websites.

Ads campaigns are based on individual daily budgets to give advertisers comprehensive control over their spending. Ads are only displayed until the respective budget is used up.

Increase the success of a website with Google Ads

Before advertisers start an advertising campaign with ads, it is important to define the goals of this marketing measure. Ads clients typically want to achieve the following when they run ads on the search engine or Google Display Network:

• increase brand awareness

• Increase traffic to the website

• win leads

• achieve sales

• Generate visits to offline branches

Ads is a powerful tool that has an enormous reach thanks to its embedding in the Google search engine and the display network. However, advertising budgets are usually limited, and profitable keywords and online advertising space on third-party sites are subject to fierce competition.

 The challenge that a profitable ads campaign poses to advertisers is therefore to optimize ads for the respective marketing goals and to place them where they achieve the desired effect. We reveal how advertisers do this in an in-depth article on the subject.