If you want to reach more of the right people, you can do so with several types of Google Ads.
Want to reach more customers? Running Google Ads may be the solution for you and your business. Today, there are several types of Google ads available today. Understanding their differences and using each type of Google ad effectively can mean the difference between customers finding your business or customers finding your competition.
In this article, you will discover the most common types of Google Ads.
If you want the team at Sachs Marketing Group to help you with your Google ads, click here.
Overview
Popular Types of Google Ads
To summarize things as much as possible, Google offers three basic types of ads: search, display, and video.
You’ll find search ads in search results on Google products like Search and Shopping. They’re designed to blend in with other results and provide relevant promoted content to users looking for certain products or businesses. Not every search result will provide a complementary ad.
Display ads are usually the ads Google serves as part of its larger ad network on websites throughout the World Wide Web. When you see a banner ad on a separate website, app, YouTube, or Gmail, this is a display ad.
Video ads are used to reach users on YouTube, Google’s video-sharing platform and the largest, most successful long-form video content platform on the web. Video ads can be further differentiated as skippable and non-skippable.
Among these three major types, many separate subtypes describe how these different Google products can be used to your advantage. Let’s go over some of the most important ones.
1. Brand Name Ads
Many established businesses leave money on the table by missing out on brand name ads. These are search ads targeting users that are looking for your brand. At first glance, this strategy might seem counterintuitive. After all, if a search user is looking for your business, they will find it near the top of their results if you’ve done your SEO homework. And that organic traffic is more than enough.
Well, to a degree, you’re right. But one of the crucial strategies in more prominent industries with more advertising leverage is to undercut the competition by enabling ads that target a competitor’s brand name to appear near the top in results looking for their services. Utilizing that space yourself helps prevent this and is usually relatively cheap. If your branding is big enough to go after, brand name search ads are worth considering.
2. Generic Product Ads
These are often what a bulk of search ad campaigns target – generic product or service terms. For example, you might want to start an ad campaign for the search term “air mattresses” if you’re a business that sells or retails different bedwear, sheets, mattresses, pillows, and bedroom articles.
The downside? Generic product ads can be expensive. You’re likely competing with larger retailers with a much bigger advertising budget.
3. Specific Product Ads
This is where a lot of the ROI can be for smaller businesses. By targeting ads towards very specific or niche services and products, you corner smaller markets and satisfy customer demand where it goes largely unmet.
Another big plus of going after specific products and services is narrowing down your customers wants. You can link to more specific products or landing pages more likely to result in a solid lead or even a sale.
4. Google Performance Max Ads
These are more complicated than your typical hand-crafted ad campaign. Google’s Performance Max is a product that aims to utilize available data and machine learning to better generate efficient ad campaigns for your business across multiple ad channels simply by identifying key goals and metrics for your campaigns.
In other words, Performance Max ads allow you to give Google the ability to spec an ad campaign based on your specified campaign objectives (such as traffic to a specific page, more leads, sales of a specific item, or promoting a brick-and-mortar location).
Performance Max is the future and will be the standard of Google Ads. For example, Google’s Smart Shopping and Local campaigns will automatically upgrade to Performance Max in late 2022.
- Tyson Crandall, COO / Google Ads Specialist
5. Interest-Based Display Ads
These are display ads built to target potential users on related platforms or websites based on mutual interest between your products or services and the content the user is visiting.
These are usually quite cheap and built to drive awareness or leverage a high level of transferability across different brands in a given niche or community (i.e., brand loyalty is not a big deal in your industry).
6. Contextual Display Ads
These display ads work similarly to the previously mentioned brand or competitor search ads – by relying on context (provided through keywords) within certain content to appeal to users looking for something similar, if not the same product or service.
7. Managed Display Ads
You can finetune display ads to specific websites or apps rather than relying on Google’s automated placement through the ad network.
This is more expensive – but it can pay off if you’re confident or have enough data to suggest that you’re getting a solid amount of leads from websites like this.
8. YouTube Related Feed Ads
YouTube’s version of search ads is in-feed ads – images, links, or even videos that appear in a user’s Related Videos tab and may draw their attention as they view related content. A great low-cost way to promote your videos if you’ve seen some benefit out of doing so (i.e., great traffic from a certain video to your website or a related product).
9. YouTube Video Ads
Also known as in-stream ads, these are either skippable or non-skippable ads that YouTube puts in nearly any video past a certain length. Videos of more than ten minutes in length may have an intro and an outro-ad and intermittent ad breaks.
Video ads can be hit-or-miss. Most users will skip them as soon as possible, and they can be an incredible nuisance to viewers if they are not relevant to the content the user is watching. As such, it is imperative to be accurate with your targeting of these. It’s also important to remember how Google charges for these ads. They’re cost-per-view, but not every instance of an impression counts as a complete “view,” meaning YouTube (and Google) will not charge you for every viewer who watches through the first forced ten seconds, then immediately clicks away.
For skippable ads, YouTube will only count a “view” as more than 30 seconds or the entire ad duration if your ad is less than 30 seconds long. For non-skippable ads, every view is (naturally) counted.
10. YouTube Bumper Ads
These are rarer, relatively cost-effective ads that only run about six seconds – not long enough to present any meaningful message but long enough to remind viewers of a particular product or flex your branding. For example, a fast-food or snack company can easily use a bumper ad to remind viewers of an ongoing promotional item or a new flavor. If your business is unknown to viewers, trying to gain recognition in six seconds can be tricky. But depending on the niche you are targeting – and your dominance in that niche – these ads can be a great way to introduce gentle reminders into related content and funnel more organic traffic toward your products or services.
As powerful as Google is, and as much as it leverages its stranglehold on the search engine industry, it isn’t the only big fish in the pond regarding ad options. However, it is one of the more important ones – and making the most of your online ad budget often means including at least a handful of campaigns on Google products, whether it’s Google Search, Google Shopping, YouTube, or Google’s immense ad network spanning across millions of websites.
Strategy is important, but you cannot formulate that strategy without the prerequisite data. Experiment! Gather information! Perform A/B testing on your ad copy, shopping images, and video thumbnails! Or partner with us, and let us help you spearhead your Google ad campaigns.
Need Help Running Google Ads?
Managing Google Ads can be extremely challenging for businesses. Between keyword research, campaign optimization, and analyzing data, it takes a significant amount of time and effort to create an effective Google Ads strategy. Moreover, if you’re not an expert, your campaigns might not reach their full potential or worse, waste precious advertising dollars.
Imagine the frustration of dedicating resources to your Google Ads, only to see little to no return on investment. The constant changes in the advertising landscape, competitor activities, and updates in Google’s algorithms could be leaving you feeling overwhelmed and in the dark about how to truly harness the power of Google Ads. This can mean missed opportunities, lower conversion rates, and a diluted market presence.
Partnering with Sachs Marketing Group to run your Google Ads can take this burden off your shoulders. As experts in Google Ads management, we have the knowledge and experience to optimize your campaigns for success. Not only do we handle keyword research and campaign settings, but we also closely monitor and adjust your campaigns for the best results. With Sachs Marketing Group handling your Google Ads, you can rest easy knowing your advertising dollars are being used effectively, freeing up your time to focus on what you do best – running your business.
Conclusion
Google Ads can be a great way to attract potential customers, but it’s essential to know which types of ads will work best for your business.
If you’re unsure where to start, try experimenting with a few different types of ads and see which ones generate the best results. Remember that finding the right mix of ads that works for your business may take some time, but it’s worth it when you see those increased profits!
Keep a close eye on which ads are working for your business for the best results. This will help you optimize your ads and reveal how to improve PPC ROI so we you can rest assured knowing your ads providing the best bang for your buck.
Which types of Google ads are you running at the moment?
