Advertising on Google Ads

Attract more potential customers to your website in no time. On this page you will learn the most important things you need to know before advertising on Google Ads.

What is Google Ads?

Google Ads is Google's online advertising platform. Using Google Ads, you can attract new potential customers to your website in no time.

You may know the advertising platform under the name Adwords, because that's what the platform was called for many years. In 2018, the name Adwords was changed to Ads.

The biggest advantage of Google Ads: you only pay for results. In other words, the number of clicks to your website. For showing ads, you pay nothing at all! It is even possible to steer campaigns based on conversions. For B2B companies, this could be, for example, a download of a white paper, or filling out a contact form. For an online store, a conversion is a purchase.

Why advertise on Google Ads?

Google processes more than 3.6 million(!) searches every minute. There is also a lot of Googling in the B2B sector. According to research firm Forrester, 71% of every purchase starts with an online search. The sooner you are under the attention of a potential buyer, the better. That's why it's important to be findable in Google. Google's advertising platform helps you get this done in the short term.

Would you rather go for a long-term strategy where you pay nothing to Google? Then take a look at our SEO knowledge page. If you ask us, the power lies in the combination of the two!

How does Google Ads work?

Google Ads has several ad networks:

• The Search Network, which notably includes the search engine Google, but also other "search engines," such as Google Maps, Google Shopping and YouTube. You also have the option of displaying ads on Google's search partners. These include, for example, Startpagina, Ebay, Kieskeurig and Marktplaats.
• The Display Network, in this network there are two million websites that cooperate with Google and therefore display ads. According to Google, you reach more than 90% of all Internet users by advertising in the Display Network.

Advertising in the Search Network

Bidding strategy CPC

In Google's search network, most organizations advertise based on the CPC bidding strategy. This stands for Cost Per Click, or cost per click. This means you pay Google for every click on your ad. How much this is depends on several factors, but you are always able to specify a maximum amount you are willing to pay for one click.

In addition, you also specify a daily budget per campaign. The costs then never exceed your daily budget. In this way, Google ensures that your costs never exceed your budget. More information about costs can be found later in this article under Costs Google Ads.

Other bidding strategies

Google Ads has other bidding strategies besides CPC. For example, with the vCPM bidding strategy, you pay per thousand visible impressions. You only do this if visibility is more important to you than clicks on your ads. For example, for a branding campaign.

In addition, Google Ads offers a number of automated bidding strategies. One interesting one is Target CPA. With this strategy, Google optimizes your bid to achieve as many conversions as possible at (your) specified cost per conversion. For example, a Google Ads conversion is downloading gated content on your website for the purpose of lead generation, or filling out a contact form.

Benefits of the Google Ads Search Network

• With 3.6 million searches per minute and a market share of more than 95%, Google is the search engine to go to if you want to advertise.
• You reach people at the moment they are actually searching. If you properly match the ad and your landing page to the search query then you are giving them exactly what they are looking for.
• Google Search ads do not interfere with what people are doing. The ads offer the user as much added value (if done right) as Google's normal results.
• You only pay for concrete results, namely clicks, not impressions as with many other (online) ads.
• You have the option to steer the ads towards the end goal: conversions! So with target-CPA you steer on the cost per conversion.

Advertising in the Display Network

When advertising in the Display Network, you are not advertising in a search engine, or on a Google website, but on third-party websites. This immense partner network of Google consists of 2 million websites.

Targeting in the Display Network

In the Display Network, the possibilities for targeting are greater than in Google's Search Network. You have the following possibilities:

• People visiting websites related to certain keywords;
• People with an interest in a particular topic or product;
• People with certain demographic characteristics, such as young women;
• People who have visited your website before (for more info, see Remarketing).

You are also able in the Display Network to choose a combination of the above options. For example, you can target young men who are interested in software the moment they visit a website about innovation or IT.

You can leave the choice of which website to advertise on to Google or make it yourself. For example, you can show your ads only on nu.nl or on websites related to your own industry or sector.

Types of ads

Unlike Google's Search Network, in the Display Network it is also possible to advertise with banners. You can create these yourself (image or in HTML5), but you can also leave some of the ad creation to Google using responsive display ads.

With the latter variant, you only specify the text, your logo and images you want in the ad. Google then automatically creates ads that match the style and look of the site you're advertising on. Such ads are also called native ads. The purpose of a native ad is that the user experience of the visitor is not (negatively) influenced by the ad on the page. The ad is, as it were, one with the rest of the website.

Other ad opportunities in the Display Network:

• Gmail ads, which are designed specifically for Gmail;
• Engagement ads, which are particularly video ads, for example for YouTube.

Advantages of advertising in the Display Network

• Choice of 2 million websites on which to advertise that together reach more than 90% of total Internet traffic.
• Advertising with native ads that blend into the design of the websites you advertise on.
• Unique targeting options not available in the Search Network, such as targeting by interest areas and demographics like gender and age.
• Advertising on websites of your choice.

Remarketing

Remarketing takes place in the Display Network or in the Search network, but it deserves a special mention. This is because it allows you to show ads specifically to people who have visited your website before.

You can target people who have visited any page of your website, or people who have visited a specific page, or series of pages. The only requirement is that your remarketing list is larger than 1,000 people. This is a requirement by Google to ensure the privacy of your visitors. Once more than 1,000 people have visited the page, or series of pages you are able to specifically target them with a custom ad.

Interesting fact: Google calls this form of advertising Remarketing, but officially it is called Retargeting.

The benefits of Remarketing

• You reach people who already know you, this is hugely powerful. For example, you can specifically reach people who have visited your website but have not yet converted.
• You are able to be very relevant. For example, you can reach people who have visited a product page and show them an ad specifically about that product.
• You are able to control how often a person sees an ad, so you avoid reaching the irritation threshold.

Activating Google Ads

Getting started with Google Ads is very simple:

1. Go to Google Ads and choose "start now.
2. If you already have a Google account, log in. If not, choose 'create account'.
3. Follow the steps and create your first campaign and ad group.
4. Fill in your payment information.

We recommend starting simple: this means one campaign in the Search Network, one ad group and a number of associated keywords. Are you getting the right results? Then expand your ads.

How to choose the right keywords?

To choose the right keywords, it is highly advisable to do keyword research. Such research is very useful for Google Ads, but also for SEO and content marketing.

To begin with, the Google keyword planner is a good option for keyword research, but if you are serious about Google Ads and SEO, it is advisable to use a combination of tools. Of course, you can also outsource keyword research to Bright. We have years of experience conducting these studies.

How does Google determine ad position?

What's important to know is that Google Ads is actually a kind of auction. When someone searches Google for a keyword that is being advertised, the auction starts. The auction determines your ad position as well as your cost.

The auction goes through the following steps:

1. Search takes place
   Someone searches Google for a keyword to be advertised.
2. Suitable ads are searched for
   Google determines if the keyword matches your ad.
3. Poor quality ads are removed
   Your ad must meet certain quality conditions: the CTR must be high enough and the landing page must have a certain quality.
4. Remaining ads are ranked
   Ranking takes place based on a combination of factors, including: your bid, your quality score (more info below) of your ad and the context of the search query.
5. Ad is shown

Cost Google Ads

Pay per click

In Google Ads, the vast majority of advertisers pay per click. This is also known as a CPC (Cost Per Click) model.

However, the cost of a click is never the same and depends on several factors. Above you have read that for every search query an auction starts in Google Ads.This of course only happens when that particular keyword is being advertised. Your bid thus competes with the bids of other advertisers.

As with any auction, the highest bid wins. This advertiser pays 1 cent more for the click than the bid below it.

Quality Score

At Google, however, nothing is as it seems. What a lot of people don't know is that quality score has a big impact on cost. The image below makes this clear. This is because Google multiplies your bid by your quality score. This is called your Ad Rank.

Example calculation cost Google Ads

In the example above, advertiser 1 has an ad rank of 20 (2 euro * 10 kw. score). All other advertisers have a lower ad ranking so advertiser 1 gets the highest ad position.

Advertiser 1's actual cost is formed by the ad ranking of the advertiser below him and his own quality score. This is because advertiser 2's ad ranking is divided by advertiser 1's quality score. In the above example, this means: 16/10 = 1.60 euros. To this, Google always adds 1 cent. The CPC cost for advertiser 1 is therefore 1.61 euros.

Pay per thousand impressions

In the Display Network it is possible to pay per click, but it is also possible to pay per thousand impressions of your ad. This is called a vCPM bid. vCPM stands for Viewable Cost Per Mile.

Viewable means that you pay only when your ad is actually shown to a user. So if your ad is below the fold on a particular website (user must scroll to see the ad) and the user leaves the website before your ad has actually been seen, you pay nothing.

When do you choose a vCPM model?

You choose a vCPM model when visibility of your ad is more important to you than a click on your ad.

This can be the case, for example, when an organization or product is still completely new in the market and has not built up any brand awareness.

Pay per conversion

For many companies, achieving online conversions is a primary objective. For these companies, it is interesting to consider a Google Ads model that supports this objective.

The best-known model in this area is Google Ads' CPA model. CPA stands for Cost Per Acquisition. In other words, you pay per conversion. This can be a soft conversion, such as a white paper download on a B2B website. Or a hard conversion, such as a purchase on an online store.

However, you should take the CPA model with a small grain of salt. After all, you don't actually pay for a conversion; you actually still pay per click. This doesn't make the model any less interesting, however, because it can actually help you achieve your goals within budget.

How does the CPA model of Google Ads work?

The CPA model is a "smart bidding" strategy by Google. This means that instead of you deciding what your bid per click is, you leave it to the intelligence of the Google algorithm.

If you advertise in Google Ads based on a CPA model, you specify what one conversion is worth to you. Google then uses machine learning (a form of Artificial Intelligence) to optimize your bids (per click) in the auction. This means that Google tries to get as many conversions as possible at the CPA bid you have specified. The more conversion data Google has, the more accurate the algorithm is able to estimate when the probability of conversion is highest.

Google will always try to keep the cost per conversion equal (or lower) to your CPA bid. However, there is no guarantee that this will actually succeed. If you have specified a non-realistic bid, then the CPA bid will not be met. Hence, we wrote above that you should take "pay per conversion" with a small grain of salt.

Google Ads vs. SEO

So which is a better strategy to attract potential customers to your website? At Bright, we are fans of the combination!

With SEO, you are able to attract potential customers to your website in a sustainable way. The big advantage here is that you pay nothing to Google. In addition, the organic CTR is much higher than the CTR of advertisements. So more people click on the natural search results than on the ads.

However, the disadvantage of SEO is that it is a long-term strategy. Especially for new websites, think of SEO as a flywheel. The wheel is heavy and it can be tricky to get it going, but once it's running, there's no stopping it! In the short term, however, you won't get great results from it, because your domain needs to build authority by getting links from other websites.

Let this be possible with Google Ads! It allows you to get results on the same day. Ads go live quickly and deliver (if set up effectively) immediate results. In addition, you can quickly test which titles and descriptions resonate with your target audience. These lessons also help you achieve more results with SEO.

In short: the combination of SEO and Google Ads is extremely powerful! With Google Ads you are able to attract visitors in the short term on keywords that you do not yet succeed with SEO. You then use SEO to achieve sustainable results in the long term, without paying Google for every click.

Questions about Google Ads?

Achieving the desired results with Google Ads is not as easy as it seems. Do you still have questions or challenges regarding Google Ads? Our consultants will be happy to help you! Call 085 - 760 81 81 or email info@brightdigital.com.