To run an AdWords ad, click “New Campaign”. First, you need to select the type of campaign you want to create based on your advertising goals and create a campaign. The campaign type is used to determine where users will see your ads, and you can choose more specific ad placements through ad targeting. For example, if you want to display ads on Google and attract more users to visit your website, you should choose a “Search Network” campaign. Each advertising network has different types of campaigns that can meet different goals. This book introduces some of these campaign types and uses “Search Network” ads as an example to introduce the steps of running Google AdWords ads.
(1) Search Network ads
Ads in a “Search Network” campaign will appear next to Google search results and on other Google websites if users search for words related to the keywords in the ad. For example, an online store selling wedding dresses runs a “Search Network” ad. When potential users search for “wedding dress”, the “Search Network” campaign will show them text ads for the store. The working principle of “Search Network” ads is that ads are matched to search results pages based on the words or phrases that users search for.
(2) Display Network Ads
The Display Network consists of more than two million websites, videos, and apps that can display AdWords ads placed by merchants. The websites of the Display Network cover more than 90% of Internet users worldwide. With the Display Network, merchants can use targeting features to display ads in a variety of ways, including displaying ads in specific contexts (such as “outdoor activities”), displaying ads to specific audiences (such as “young mothers” or “users who want to buy a new car”), and displaying ads in specific locations.
(3) Shopping Ads
Shopping ads are divided into product shopping ads and showcase shopping ads. Shopping ads are not simple text ads, but contain photos, names, prices, store names, and more of the merchant’s products. These ads allow users to fully understand the products sold by the merchant before clicking on the ad, thereby bringing merchants better potential customers.
(4) Video Ads
Through the Video campaign, merchants can display Video ads alone or in YouTube and other streaming video content. Existing “Video” ad formats include TrueView in-stream ads, TrueView video discovery ads, and guide ads.
(5) Universal App Ads
“Universal App” campaigns help companies that advertise apps easily promote their apps across Google’s products and services with the largest number of users, including Google Search, Google Play, YouTube, and the Google Display Network. Companies only need to add a few lines of text, set a bid, and provide some material assets, and the system will automatically optimize the rest to help customers find and download the app.
After selecting “Search Network” ads in the campaign type, the system prompts you to select a goal you want to achieve. After selecting a goal, you will see some recommended settings and features, and of course you can also create a campaign without a goal. There are three goals to choose from: a sales goal to drive online sales, in-app sales, telephone sales, or physical store sales; a goal to encourage users to take action in order to win potential customers; and a website traffic goal to attract target audiences to visit the website.