Google Ads need no introduction. Since Google Adwords launched on October 23rd, 2000, they have been a giant in online advertising.
Google Ads helps you reach your customers when they are browsing the internet searching for words related to your business, or when they are viewing websites with similar themes. They should be an integral part of your advertising strategy.
By using Google’s advertising platform you can find new customers and grow your business, retarget users, specifically target your audience, measure your results, and much more.
According to Statista, last year Google earned $224.47 billion in advertising revenue. This is the highest annual result to date.
But not to worry, we will help you figure all of those things out.
As of January 2023, Google was responsible for 84% of global desktop search traffic. About 80% of businesses worldwide trust Google Ads for their PPC campaigns.
According to Insider Intelligence, Meta Ads and Google Ads will account for 50.5% of digital ad spend in 2023.
Businesses make an average of $2 for every $1 spent on Google Ads.
It is very clear that every business seriously interested in growth should be advertising on Google.
One amazing thing about them is that they are constantly working to improve how Google Ads work, and bring in new features.
Here are all the big changes and updates in 2023 so far.
Ads Privacy Hub is a new platform made to help businesses pursue online advertising growth in a changing digital world. It helps you understand the latest privacy changes and how they will affect your ad performance.
This platform is also designed to help you understand how you can utilize your first-party data, and how you can measure your performance in a privacy-first way.
Performance Max is a campaign type in Google Ads that allows you to access all of Google’s inventory in one campaign. They are intended to be used alongside keyword-focused Search Ads.
With these new updates, you can now add negative keywords on an account level, and they will apply to all campaigns that serve on Search and Shopping inventory except for the Discovery campaigns.
You can now add campaign-level brand exclusion so you can control which brands your campaign matches to. Google also added an option to upload a feed of pages (URLs) to refine your results when you turn on the final URL expansion feature. This helps Google’s AI understand that these URLs are important.
They also added a feature that enables you to run experiments to see how adding a Performance Max campaign to your current campaign mix might change your results.
You can now also make videos in the assets section of Performance Max campaigns.
Artificial Intelligence is getting more and more popular. It is changing the way people interact with and search the internet. That’s why Google decided to add automatically created assets to its Search Ads.
This feature will use content from your landing page to help you generate headlines and descriptions for your ads. This feature is available on Responsive Search Ads, and according to Google, early adopters saw a 2% increase in conversions with a similar conversion cost.
There is also the new customer acquisition goal available to Search Ads. You can optimize your campaign to bid higher for new customers or to bid exclusively for new customers. This feature is currently enabled only on Performance Max and Search Ads.
A Masthead ad is a YouTube ad that appears on top of the home page. Previously it only worked on a CPM basis, but now Google added an option to buy CPH (Cost-Per-Hour).
According to their post, this CPH masthead ad is best for promoting live streams, achieving 100% share-of-voice, and for moment-based campaigns. As the name of the method suggests, you are paying on an hourly basis instead of 1000 impressions (CPM).
Google Ads is getting a new, refreshed look in 2023. The first interface change is the new menu. Google is testing both single and two-level menus. This feature is currently in the testing phase and only certain users will be able to see it.
The interface will also be reorganized. Since Google Ads are goal-driven, goals will be more important in the interface. They are bringing together goals and conversion measurements in one place.
Audiences, keywords, and content will be grouped into one category in the new menu. Google is right now testing all of these changes, and they are only available to a limited number of users. That’s why it might be a while before you see them in your account.
This feature is aimed at hotel suppliers. It allows you to show relevant ads to people at the right moment, like for example when they are planning a trip.
This Performance Max campaign type is really easy to set up. You will pick your hotel properties in the setup, and Google’s AI will automatically populate all headlines, descriptions, and even images. You can of course edit all of these before launch.
To help you achieve better results, product feeds are now available on Discovery Ads. You can show consumers items based on their interests and intent.
Users can now track how their individual products listed in Google Merchant Catalog are performing in product feeds.
They also introduced a feature called Data-Driven Attribution which gives credits for conversions based on how users interact with your ads. It can help you determine which campaigns have the most impact on your business goals.
Google also announced that data-driven attribution (DDA) will become the default attribution model for conversion campaigns. Starting June 2023 they will remove the ability to select the first click, linear, time decay, and position-based attribution models.
Now, let’s break down all the types of campaigns that are currently available in Google Ads.
But, before that, let’s take a quick look at the campaign objectives.
This is for people interested in driving online, in-app, or in-store sales.
If you are interested in getting people to take the right action on your website, this is objective for you.
Pick this objective if you want to drive more relevant traffic to your website.
This objective is for companies looking to encourage users to explore their brands or products.
Choose this objective if your goal is to reach a wide audience and build awareness.
If your goal is to drive more app installs and engagement, this objective is for you.
This is perfect for brick-and-mortar businesses looking to drive more in-store visits.
Now, let’s break down all the campaign types.
Search Ads are text advertisements that show on top of Google search results whenever your target audience is searching for queries relevant to your business. The great thing about Search ads is that your ads can show up when people are looking for educational, informational, or transactional content.
That means that Google Search Ads can help you drive traffic, increase sales, or generate more leads for your business.
To set up Search Ads, you need to do thorough keyword research. This will help you understand how your audience is searching for terms relevant to your business. It will also give you information about what it is they are looking for so that you can serve them relevant ads.
After choosing the keywords you want to target, ads setup is relatively straightforward. Simply split your keywords into ad groups and create ads that are relevant to those key phrases. After that, you will set the budget, and you are good to go.
As we mentioned before, the great thing about Search Ads is that they can be used across the whole sales funnel to help you nurture your audience. You can launch and manage Google Search Ads by yourself, or you can hire a specialized Google Ads agency to help you out.
Performance Max campaign type allows advertisers to get access to all Google Ads Inventory with only one campaign. It is designed to help you deliver more performance with a goal-oriented approach. This campaign type is heavily reliant on AI, making it very easy to set up. After launch, Google will use its AI to optimize the campaign in real-time to get you the best performance possible.
This campaign type will optimize your budgets and bids across different channels to give you the best results based on your specified campaign goal. It can also help you reach new audiences by using real-time understanding of user behavior.
Google Display Ads lets you reach wide audiences across different websites, apps, and different Google properties, like YouTube for example. They allow you to reach your audience with visually engaging banners as they are browsing online.
There are two types of Display Ads - Standard and Smart. Standard Display Ads give you more manual control over your ads. Smart Display Ads utilize automated bidding, targeting, and ad creation. It can be a great option if you are short on time, or if you are just getting started with Google Ads, but we generally prefer Standard ones.
Display Ads can be a great addition to your advertising strategy. In our experience, they are excellent for driving brand awareness and traffic to your website.
If you are a retailer looking to sell products online, Shopping Ads are definitely for you. They are product listings that appear on Google Search as well as on the Google Shopping tab. You can set up these ads by adding all your products to Google Merchant Center.
You can also promote the products that are available in your physical stores with local inventory ads. These ads are great for driving more online sales because they allow you to show visually engaging images of your products just when people are searching for them.
It is safe to say that YouTube is one of the most popular websites on the internet. Video Ads allow you to show your ads on YouTube and other websites. These ads can be great for generating brand awareness or driving conversions on your website.
It can also be a great way to expand your reach to new audiences.
One really awesome feature of Video Ads is that you can create an ad sequence. For example, it would only show Ad #2 to people who already saw Ad #1. This gives you the ability to tell your story by driving awareness, consideration, and then conversions.
It also means you will be delivering more relevant advertising to your audience. You can also target your audience by topics, keywords, channels, or even specific YouTube videos that they are watching.
If you are looking to reach billions of users with visually rich content across Google’s properties, Discovery Ads are for you. These ads will be shown on YouTube Home, Watch Next feed, Discover, and Gmail Promotions and Social tabs.
These ads are designed to take advantage of users' intent and deliver more visually appealing and engaging ads. Google uses its unique understanding of users’ behavior to deliver the most relevant ads and help you drive more engagement with your brands, leads, or conversions.
In our experience, these ads can supplement your campaigns to help you drive more sales, sign-ups, or website visits.
Thank you for reading our post! We really appreciate your time.
Now, let’s recap the most important information about Google Ads in 2023.Google earned $224.47 billion in advertising revenue last year. This is their highest annual result to date. All things considered, it’s safe to assume that Google will continue to dominate the online advertising space.
Google Ads should be an integral part of your online advertising.
Google keeps updating its advertising features to help advertisers achieve better performance. Artificial Intelligence and machine learning seem to be important pieces of the future of online advertising.
Google keeps investing a lot of resources into improving the Performance Max campaign type which relies on Google’s AI.
Display Ads are a great way to build awareness and drive traffic.
Search Ads are perfect when it comes to capturing high-intent users that are looking for your products or services.
Shopping Ads are perfect for people who are looking to display their products in a visually-appealing way and encourage users to buy.
YouTube Video Ads are great for achieving exposure and driving conversions with engaging video content.
Make sure you stay up to date with the latest changes so you don’t miss out on important information.
Stefan is a marketer with 8 years of experience of working with various B2C and B2B brands.
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