8. Display Advertising on the Google Display Network Exams: Display

1. 8.1 Communicating Value of Display and the Google Display Network

   Overview and Value of Display Advertising

   1. What is Display?

      Display ads are effective in capturing your customers' attention with visually dynamic content that uses a wide creative canvas. In the world of display advertising, display ads include non-text ads that use images, Flash, video and other technologies and appear alongside website publisher content. Display ads are an effective media choice across a large variety of goals from Branding to Direct Response.

      Display advertising can reach consumers at every stage of the purchase funnel. By not implementing display ads, as an advertiser you can run the risk of losing potentially interested consumers who might need a little more influence to make a purchase decision.

   2. The Value of Display Advertising

      Users are increasingly interacting with content and looking for brands online. As a result, marketers and agencies need to follow users to effectively engage audiences - whether to encourage them to take a specific action or to make an emotional connection with your brand. Display can be used for campaign goals throughout the purchase funnel: from blasting your brand message, to owning a specific brand territory or driving traffic, sales or leads.

      The value of display comes in the consumers you are reaching. To reach consumers who are actively searching on words related to your business, use Google Search advertising to place ads next to search results pages. However, to extend your campaign to also reach high potential customers who are not yet actively searching on your brand or products, but who are engaging with online content specifically related to your area of business, use the Google Display Network. Google's technology will place your display ads against this specific type of content across thousands of sites.

      Recent data supports this display value proposition. A recent study showed that display advertising led to a substantial lift in unique users visiting advertiser websites, and an even more prominent increase in pages viewed per unique visitor.

      Display ads across the web also help drive engagement on search; after being exposed to a display ad, research has shown that consumers are significantly more likely to click on sponsored link. However, very few marketers coordinate display buys with search marketing thus the opportunity to think big and cross channel is clear.

      The opportunity to fully harness the potential in display remains large. For example, marketers still concentrate spend heavily on a small number of sites - however, a disproportionately small number of page views actually occurred on these sites. This demonstrates there's a severe disconnect between where Internet users are spending their time, and where marketers are spending their dollars trying to reach them. Google's tools and products aim to make it as easy as possible for you to harness the potential of the display space.

   Overview and Value of the Google Display Network

   1. Overview of the Google Display Network

      Google has two properties where display ads are eligible to appear:

      The Google Display Network

      The Google Display Network is comprised of Google properties like YouTube, Google Finance, Gmail, and others that offer display advertising, as well as a network of millions of partner sites on which you can place your ads.* Google has built out the tools and products needed to help you maximize results from both brand and product awareness campaigns and also direct performance campaigns that use display ads.

      Through the Google Display Network, advertisers can access display ad inventory from publisher partners in our Google AdSense program and the DoubleClick Ad Exchange. Using Google AdWords or an approved third-party ad server, advertisers can place their text, image, video, or rich media ads automatically on relevant sites across the network. They can run these campaigns across the network by manually targeting placements or certain audiences.

      Online video and game sites within the Google Display Network are also available to advertisers who want to extend the reach of their display campaigns even further. Advertisers can appear before, during or after a video stream (in-stream video ads), overlay a video or text ad on top of a video (in-video overlays), or run an image, video, or text ad at the conclusion of a video (end-cap ads). Ads are sold on an auction pricing model and can be managed through Google AdWords by selecting online video and game sites within the network.

      *Not all products are available in all countries or regions.

      YouTube

      Display ads can appear on YouTube in two ways: through an auction-based model using Google AdWords, or through a reservation-based model where placements are purchased directly through YouTube ad sales. With Google AdWords, you can target your display ads to appear in, on, or around YouTube pages. With reservation-based placements, you have access to different YouTube inventory that is not available through a self-managed AdWords account, such as the Homepage. Pricing for reserved inventory is based on a pre-determined spend with higher cost commitments and an impressions-based reservation model.

   2. The Value of Display Advertising on the Google Display Network

      The Google Display Network is used by thousands of advertisers to reach users on hundreds of thousands of web sites across all publisher categories, from large, well-known sites to niche sites and audiences. Stated simply, the Google Display Network (GDN) will place your display ads against related content and audiences across thousands of sites.

      Our job at Google is to make sure that marketers and agencies are armed with the best tools to help you plan, create, buy and target, and measure and optimize your campaigns.

      • Massive Scale: With significant global coverage your message will reach more of your target audience, in more places, more often. The Google Display Network comprises both hundreds of large sites and hundreds of thousands of niche sites.
      
      
      • Measurable Performance and Maximized Results: The Display Network delivers measurable performance for both branding and direct display clients; maximizing their results. For example, our research shows that when advertisers used the Display Network in combination with Search, the median advertiser has a Display Network cost per acquisition (CPA) that's within approximately 2% of their Search CPA. The Google Display Network also drives nearly 20% of total conversions for the median advertiser.*
      
      
      • Contextual Engine: A key driver of the success is Google's ability to harness the power of the best contextual engine on the planet to place ads against the most relevant content. This enables you to find and connect with the most engaged audiences. Research shows that brand recall increases significantly when ads are targeted contextually v. non-contextually relevant.
      
      
      • Custom Networks through Effective Targeting: Keyword contextual targeting, along with other targeting technologies available on the Google Display Network such as placement targeting and audience targeting, allows you to build and target to your own custom networks and to find and connect with the right customers more effectively and more often.
      
      
      • Transparency, Actionable Insights and Value through Auction: In terms of campaign management, tools such as the Placement Performance Report, Conversion Optimizer, and Conversion Tracking provide complete transparency into what's working, and what isn't. This gives you the actionable insights you need to help you effectively optimize your campaigns.
      
      

      With flexible pricing models (CPM, CPC, CPA) as well as the most popular Display Ad formats, and transparency into performance, the Google Display Network drives results every day for thousands of advertisers around the world.

      *source: Google internal study
      ** source: comScore Key Measures Report, March 2009
      *** Internal case studies

   3. Benefits for Brand and Direct Response Advertisers

      Display advertising on the Google Display Network is effective in helping advertisers achieve a wide variety of goals, from branding to direct response.

      Brand Advertisers

      Brand advertisers are typically most concerned with ensuring their message reaches their target audience, while maintaining control of where their brand appears, and the cost per impression of their ads. The Google Display Network allows advertisers to build a custom network of sites utilizing a wide range of targeting technologies (e.g., keyword contextual, placement, and audience). This allows advertisers to find and connect with their target audience more effectively and more often, providing them with effective targeting at scale.

      If you're primarily concerned with branding goals, you can manually select sites where you want your ad to appear. You can also use site and category exclusions, and negative keywords to avoid showing on certain sites and content within the network. For example, if you're selling ski boots and you decide to target the sports section of an online newspaper, you can use negative keywords, such as football, to avoid showing your ad on irrelevant content. Our auction pricing model ensures that advertisers are paying competitive prices set by the market, not by Google, and advertisers pay only what an impression is worth to them.

      Direct Response Advertisers

      Direct response advertisers are normally looking to drive a high volume of conversions at the lowest possible price, and therefore aren't as concerned with marketing their brand. A conversion could be a sign up, lead, purchase, or other actions that an advertiser wants a user to take.

      A key driver of the Google Display Network's success in driving direct response advertisers' goals is the ability of Google's contextual targeting engine to place ads against the most relevant content across the web. This enables advertisers to connect with the most engaged audiences at the right moment. For example, if you're selling digital cameras, you can chose keywords such as "digital camera" to show your ad on web pages about camera equipment, discussion groups for camera hobbyists, or camera product review sites.

      Transparent reporting on Google AdWords with Placement Performance Reports helps advertisers see what is and isn't working to optimize their display campaigns accordingly. The auction pricing model ensures that advertisers are paying competitive prices set by the market. When combined with the option to pay only when a user clicks, and tools like Conversion Optimizer to automatically manage bids to a target cost per acquisition (CPA), the Google Display Network becomes an effective channel for direct response advertisers to achieve their performance goals for both display and non-display campaigns.

   Overview of Display & The Google Display Network

   1. Display Inventory and Ad Formats on the Google Display Network

      Display Inventory

      Display inventory on the Google Display Network can come from one of two sources: AdSense or the DoubleClick Ad Exchange.

      • AdSense: AdSense publishers are the primary source of inventory on the Google Display Network, serving text, display, and video ads from AdWords on their sites. Publishers determine the type and size of ads they want to allow on their site, and then Google delivers ads that are relevant to their content through either contextual or placement targeting.
      
      
      • DoubleClick Ad Exchange: Select inventory from the DoubleClick Ad Exchange is also part of the Google Display Network. All advertisers who are opted in to the Display Network [limited to certain regions] have access to DoubleClick Ad Exchange inventory. This allows your ads to appear on numerous DoubleClick Ad Exchange publisher sites in addition to those available through Google AdSense.
      
      

      Advertisers can choose from a variety of media to communicate their marketing message on the Google Display Network, consisting of publisher partners, and on the DoubleClick Ad Exchange. Google has built out the tools and products needed to help you maximize results from both brand and product awareness campaigns and also direct performance campaigns that use display ads.

      Ad Formats

      The following display ad types are eligible to show on the Google Display Network:

      • Text Ads: These are the most basic type of AdWords ads. They can be created directly in your AdWords account, and are often referred to as "sponsored links."
      
      
      • Image Ads: AdWords image ads are graphical ads that can be static (motionless) or animated. You can create and upload your own image ads, or use the AdWords Display Ad Builder to create one. Image ads can also be served by any certified third party ad server. Learn more about the Display Ad Builder.
      
      
      • Video Ads: Online video is one of the largest areas of media consumption, with an audience of hundreds of millions who are open and accustomed to advertising in video content. Google AdWords allows you to reach and engage this audience with video placements and ads, which can be uploaded directly into the AdWords interface or served by a certified third party ad server. Learn more about Video Ads.
      
      
      • Rich Media Ads: Rich media ads allow you to more actively engage a web user than standard text or display formats. Rich media ads include video ads, Flash animated ads, and ads that mix text and animated content and designs. You can easily create these types of ads using the AdWords Display Ad Builder, or you can use existing rich media assets served through a third party ad server. Learn more about Rich Media Ads.
      
      

   2. Media Purchase Options on the Google Display Network

      Google AdWords is an auction-based advertising system that allows you to bid for ad placements on Google properties or publisher partner websites within the Google Display Network. You can bid on a cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-thousand-impression (CPM) basis. The winner of the auction pays the minimum amount necessary to outrank the next advertiser in the auction when the ad appears on a page.

      If you're running a campaign on both the Search and Display Networks simultaneously, you may want to set a separate bid for when your ads appear on Display Network sites. The Display Network bidding feature makes this possible. It helps you manage your budget and meet your specific advertising goals.

      Choose the right pricing for your goals:

      • Cost-per-click (CPC): With CPC bidding, you tell us how much you're willing to pay per click, and we use that price in our auction pricing system. CPC is a great choice if your goal is to drive traffic to your site with your ads.
        
        
      • Cost-per-thousand impression (CPM): With cost-per-thousand-impression (CPM) bidding, you bid based on the amount you want to pay for impressions, or views, of your ad. CPM bidding works best when you want to focus on branding - when it's important that your message is seen by as many of your target user group as possible, and generating traffic is not your primary goal.
        
        
      • Cost-per-acquisition (CPA): With the Conversion Optimizer tool, you bid using a maximum cost-per-acquisition (CPA), which is the most you're willing to pay for a customer performing a specified action on your website (such as a purchase or signup). Using historical information about your campaign, the Conversion Optimizer automatically finds the optimal cost-per-click (CPC) bid for your ad each time it's eligible to appear. You still pay per click, but you no longer need to adjust your bids manually to reach your CPA goals and can benefit from improved ROI. If your goal is to drive online transactions, this is the right choice for you.

   3. Overview of Video Targeting on the Google Display Network

      Google offers the world's largest online video audience, based on our partnerships with top video publishers, platforms, and the reach of YouTube, the world's largest video property. We offer several advertising solutions to help you target video content across the Internet. To learn more about advertising solely on YouTube, visit www.youtube.com/advertise.

      Advertisers can target the video content within the Google Display Network in three ways: in a video, with a video, or around a video.

      In a video

      • Appear in the bottom 20% of the video viewing area with Google's InVideo ads.
      
      
      • Any advertiser's text overlay ads may be displayed within videos as part of a contextually targeted campaign.
      
      

      With a video

      • In-stream Video Ads: Pre-roll, mid-roll, and post-roll video ads can target video content across the Google Display Network. You can reach audiences watching videos in many genres, and even place in-stream video ads in online games.
      
      
      • Click-to-play Video Ads: With click-to-play video ads, you can reach your target market on various sites in the Google Display Network with user-initiated video ads that can be measured and optimized based on performance.
      
      

      Around a video

      • Placement target video-oriented sites with a variety of ad formats, including standard text ads and image ads. This allows you to supplement your in-stream or InVideo advertising by targeting other placements on sites where users typically engage with video.
      
      
      • Set up a placement targeted campaign, choose keywords like "video" as your topic, and then start placement targeting video-oriented sites.

2. 8.2 Plan a Campaign

   Planning a Display Campaign

   1. The Value of Planning Ahead

      Running an effective display campaign requires careful planning. The value of planning lies in efficient execution, which can lead to a lower cost of implementation. It's important to think carefully about what you want to achieve, the message you want your consumer to take away, and your success metrics.

      Questions to consider while planning your display campaign:

      • What are the main benefits you're offering?
      
      
      • What is your competitive edge?
      
      
      • Who are your target customers?
      
      
      • What is your target price?
      
      

      There are four main stages to planning a display campaign, which you will learn more about in the next section:

      1. Identify your goals
      
      
      2. Find your target audience
      
      
      3. Create your custom display ad
      
      
      4. Set your bids and budget
      
      
      5. Understand performance management tools and features
      
      

   2. How to Plan a Display Campaign

      There are five main stages to planning a display campaign:

      1. Identify your goals: Is your goal to drive direct response traffic and generate clicks? Or is your goal to promote your brand and measure user engagement? Identifying your goals upfront will help you to better plan and implement your display campaigns. The ultimate goal for your campaign will influence your targeting choices, pricing model, creative messaging, and even the metrics you choose to track.

      2. Find your target audience: Finding potential customers distributed across thousands of publisher websites can be difficult. Google's targeting technologies help you determine which sites would be most relevant for your campaigns, allowing you to connect with your customers when and where it matters. Relevant ads are more valuable for both consumers and advertisers. You can find your target audience for your display campaign by:

      • Targeting based on a webpage's content: Contextual Targeting uses keywords to automatically match your ad to the content of a webpage.
      
      
      • Hand picking sites: Use Placement Targeting to choose ad placements, from entire websites to ad positions on specific webpages.
      
      
      • Defining relevant concepts on handpicked sites: Find niche audiences with a combination of Placement and Contextual Targeting.
      
      
      • Finding users in specific interest categories: Interest-Based Advertising reaches users based on the types of sites they visit.
      
      
      • Optimizing by demographic, location, and time: Demo bidding, geo and day-parting controls let you focus your spend in the right areas.
      
      
      • Excluding irrelevant content and sites: Advanced targeting controls provide your full control over where your ads appear.
      
      
      • Managing Frequency of ad impressions: Frequency capping lets you focus your impressions on more interested consumers.
      
      

      3. Create your custom display ad: Use Google's display ad builder to customize a new ad, or upload your own. Customize your messaging to be specific to your product and audience, and to drive the desired user response.

      4. Set your bids and budget: With Google, you only pay what an ad is worth to you. In our unique pricing model, every ad is an auction; you bid the maximum amount you are willing to pay for a click or an impression. Cost-per-click (CPC) pricing is most appropriate for advertisers who are looking to direct traffic to their website or online store. Cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) pricing is appropriate for advertisers who are familiar with traditional ad industry metrics and are looking for brand name visibility with potential customers.

      5. Understand performance management tools and features: AdWords offers several tools and features to help you evaluate and manage the performance of your display campaigns. It's important to understand these tools upfront so that you are comfortable using them when the time comes to optimize your campaign. For example, if you have direct response marketing goals, you should set up Conversion Tracking after you've set your bids and budget in order to better measure your success later. Learn more about the available AdWords Tools.

   Google's Campaign Planning Tools

   1. Researching Sites with Ad Planner

      Ad Planner is a media research and planning tool that helps you find websites your customers are likely to visit. Using a combination of geography, demographics, search keywords and commonly visited sites, you can define your target audience and discover where it's going online. This allows you to get a higher return on investment (ROI) through improved campaign targeting.

      Three key benefits of using AdPlanner are:

      1. Reach: Find enough sites that work for your campaign
      
      
      2. Relevance: Ensure the sites you're targeting are appropriate to your audience
      
      
      3. Insights: See where your audience is going online, beyond what you may already know
      
      

      Using Ad Planner is simple. Once you've accessed the tool (google.com/adplanner), you will see 2 tabs: Research and Media Plan. The Research tab allows you to enter any website that you'd like more information about. You can also see statistics for popular websites for any given audience.

      Within the Research tab, you can search for relevant sites to target in two ways:

      • Search by Site: By entering the URL of any website you are interested in, Ad Planner will show you relevant statistics for that site such as unique visitors, pageviews, demographic composition, and related sites and keywords. For websites that accept advertising, you can also see information on ad formats and impression ranges available through AdWords.
      
      
      • Search by Audience: Define the web usage behavior of your audience by keywords they search or sites they visit. Change "Ranking Method" to determine if you want to see the sites with largest number of users (Audience Reach), sites that have the highest percentage of your target audience (Composition Index), or sites that have both a high concentration of your audience and widespread reach (Best Match). Ad Planner will show the up to 250 sites visited by that audience, and various relevant statistics about each site. You can click on the sites that are most relevant to you and learn more about them, or save them in your Media Plan.
      
      

      Once you have found the sites that you are interested in, you can save them to a media plan. The media plan will show you unique traffic and reach statistics for your plan. You can also look at the total demographic profile of the sites in your plan to ensure they will reach your desired audience.

   Campaign Targeting Options

   1. Best Practices for Direct Response Campaigns

      For direct response campaigns, the most important metric is cost-per-acquisition (CPA), or cost-per lead, which is primarily impacted by number of clicks the campaign receives and the conversion rate. By refining your campaign targeting options, you can send more qualified traffic to your site - increasing the chances of a visitor becoming a customer. Taking time upfront to set up your campaign correctly goes a long way in achieving this goal.

      1. Create a separate Display Network campaign: Setting up a separate campaign just for the Display Network will allow you to have more control over keywords and bids than if the campaign were combined with Search. Select "relevant pages across the network" to maximize your reach. Include or exclude the Mobile Display Network depending on whether you are trying to reach people who are accessing your site through mobile devices.
      
      
      2. Only reach potential customers: Target customers in the languages and geographic regions where you offer your product or service. Minimizing the number of people who see and click on your ad who are unable to purchase your product or service will help reduce your cost-per-acquisition (CPA) and increase your conversion rate. Ad Scheduling and demographic targeting can also help to ensure that you're only reaching your target audience.
      
      
      3. Use Keyword contextual targeting: Contextual targeting is best suited for driving performance and cost-efficient conversions. This targeting method will identify the most relevant pages where you ad is eligible to appear based on your keywords; showing your ad on sites where users are most likely to click.
      
      
      4. Implement cost-per-click (CPC) bidding: Just like Search, this means you will only pay when a user clicks on your ad. CPC bidding is a must if you want to use Conversion Optimizer.
      
      
      5. Create many, tightly themed ad groups: Multiple ad groups with clear themes, and a small tightly related set of keywords (5-50) enables AdWords to target your campaign more effectively on the Google Display Network. Use keywords that have one meaning and avoid duplicate keywords in the same ad group.
      
      
      6. Include Negative keywords: This will prevent ads from showing on irrelevant themes that may be related to the keywords you are targeting, resulting in more qualified clicks.
      
      
      7. Exclude irrelevant or poor-performing sites: You can get more qualified traffic by excluding sites that don't perform well for you based on historic data, or are irrelevant to your product.
      
      
      8. Set up AdWords Conversion Tracking: Install Conversion Tracking on your website before you start a Google Display Network campaign, and create multiple conversion points across different pages of your site. This will give you more data to leverage when optimizing your campaigns, allowing you to understand whether you need to improve your campaign targeting or the conversion process on your site.
      
      
      9. Use Conversion Optimizer to manage CPA: Google Conversion Optimizer automatically manages bids at the site level to reach a maximum cost-per-acquisition (CPA) bid, which is the amount you're willing to pay for a conversion (such as a purchase or signup). When you enable the Conversion Optimizer for a campaign, you set a maximum CPA bid for each ad group.
      
      

3. 8.3 Generate Creatives

   Ad Formats For The Google Display Network

   1. Text Ads

      This module contains information on creation and best practices for various ad formats on the GDN.

      Text ads are the simplest ad format, and are also the easiest to create and edit. You can quickly create multiple variations for different products to test ad text or landing pages. These ads are the most versatile ad format with the widest reach across the web.

      Generally, you should create separate ad groups for text ads and display ads to best optimize your bidding. If you have different goals for your text and display ads, (e.g. direct response goals for text and branding goals for display) you should create separate ad groups for each ad format to best optimize your bidding. However, if you're solely focused on direct response, you may want to manage your text and display ads in the same ad group and bid the same amount for both to get the most cost effective conversion for your budget. Similarly, if your goal is getting maximum reach from your campaign, it can be beneficial to include a text ad in each ad group, as some publishers only accept text ads.

      Advertisers often see a lower cost per acquisition (CPA) with text ads than with display ads since cost-per-click (CPC) targeted text ads only take up a fraction of space in an ad block. This can lead to them costing less in the auction.

      Here are a few best practices to keep in mind when creating text ads:

      • Attract the user's attention by writing compelling ads
      
      
      • Describe clearly what your products or services you're offering
      
      
      • Highlight unique selling points or special offers
      
      
      • Reference a desired action such as "order online" or "sign up today"
      
      
      • Test multiple versions of your ads to determine what works best for you
      
      
      • Route users to the most relevant landing page for each creative
      
      

   2. Display Ads

      Display ads are non-text ads that use images, Flash, video and other technologies and appear alongside publisher content, and can show on both desktop computers and high end mobile devices. Advertisers use display ad formats to meet a wide variety of objectives, ranging from increasing brand awareness, to driving the number of conversions. You can easily deliver your message to your customer by using display ads on the Google Display Network.

      Here is an example that illustrates how display ads can be used successfully on the Google Display Network:

      You own a pizza restaurant in San Francisco. You can use the Display Ad Builder to develop a display ad that has an image of your most popular pizza with a call-to-action message that leads users to a discount coupon page. You can then advertise using relevant keywords on the Google Display Network and drive conversions at your local pizza store.

   3. Rich Media Ads

      Rich media ads allow you to more actively engage a web user with your content than standard text or display formats, as they allow greater interactivity and dynamic content. Rich media ads include video ads, Flash animated ads, and ads that mix text, animated content, and designs. You can easily create these types of ads using the AdWords Display Ad Builder.

      Here are a couple examples of how you can you use rich media ads:

      • Video: If you have a product demo or existing TV commercial, you can broadcast it throughout the Google Display Network using these video formats. You can create in-stream or click-to-play video ads using their unique templates.
      
      
      • Animation/image: If you are a retailer, you can showcase your top selling products along with prices and descriptions and allow users to browse through them, directly in an ad. You can select from multiple interactive templates that allow you to showcase images or set unique destination URLs per image.
      
      

   4. Video Ads

      Online video is one of the largest areas of media consumption, with an audience of hundreds of millions. Google AdWords allows you to reach and engage this audience with video placements and ads.

      Video placements can help you expand your brand reach across a large demographic of global users who are eager to view, share, and create new video content online. You can use the placement tool to target video sites such as YouTube and share your marketing message using text or display ads.

      Video ads provide users with a rich and engaging advertising experience. They supplement a web video's content, or advertise a product or service that is relevant to users watching video content. This results in enhanced online branding and cross-promotional advertising campaigns.

      • Click-to-play video: If you have a product demo or existing TV commercial, you can broadcast it throughout the Google Display Network using this video formats. These ads begin playing when clicked on by an interested user.
      
      
      • In-video: If you would like to promote your product or service directly within the video player that a user is watching, you can use either of the following:
      
      
      • Overlay: An ad that covers the bottom section of the video.
      • In-stream: A video ad that plays at the beginning, during, or end of video content.
      
      

      Learn more about the specifications and how to get started with video ads.

   Using the Display Ad Builder

   1. Display Ad Builder Overview

      Google Display Ad Builder is a free tool that allows you to create compelling, eye-catching Display ads in minutes. By providing you with pre-existing design templates, it alleviates the high cost and long lead time that often comes with generating a display creative: perfect for smaller advertisers with more modest advertising budgets. Google Display Ad Builder allows you to expand your Display Network campaigns to include new ad formats beyond text.

      With Display Ad Builder, you can create ads using your own customized text and logos. You can also upload images using standard IAB image ad formats, including simple images or Flash, or upload your own video to create a click-to-play video ad.

      Learn more about the Display Ad Builder.

   2. Basic Display Ad Builder Functions

      You can access Display Ads Builder within your AdWords account. To access the feature, select the campaign or ad group where you want to create your ad, click on the Ads tab, select Display ad builder from the "New ad" drop-down menu, choose a content category on the left, and then choose a template. To create a display ad, complete the form for the template and upload any required content. You'll be able to preview your ad to the right of the form. Then select your ad sizes above the ad preview. We recommend that you select as many variations as possible, however, you should uncheck the box for any ad size where your ad content does not display properly. Be sure to click Save Ad.

      Be sure to preview the available ad sizes near the end of the ad creation process. To change your selections, go back one step and make your changes, then finish submitting your new ad. Once your ad is created, you can only change its content (images, text, etc.). Changes to your ad's content will be applied to all existing ad sizes for the ad. To try different ad sizes for an existing display ad, you'll need to create a new ad with the same content and your new desired sizes.

      Important: Every time you create or edit your ad, you'll be creating and editing all size variations at the same time. This means that when editing the ad, all your edits will apply to all size variations selected on the page, and this will overwrite all previous selections. If you leave any unselected, this will delete the corresponding ad in that size variation.

   3. Display Ad Builder Templates

      Display Ads Builder has dozens of templates to help advertisers achieve the best performance. There are format-specific templates, such as video and rich media templates, to help advertisers specializing in those formats. Seasonal templates are good for a season or holiday-specific promotion. See an example of a seasonal ad template here. There are several vertical templates, for finance, education, retail, etc advertisers. And advertisers can also find the most popular and highest CTR templates, based on advertisers that have used templates before them.

      Each template enables you to select a headline, headline font and color, and then include product descriptions and URLs, with the option to upload accompanying images. Users can then select from among dozens of background colors and provide display and destination URLs. Lastly, you can apply the chosen design to all ad sizes or to just a chosen subset by checking and unchecking selection boxes.

      To see all the templates, go to the Ads tab in your account, and then New ad and then select Display ad builder from the drop-down menu. Scroll down and you'll all the template categories on the left side of the page. Click on any to see more templates within that category.

   Display Ad Builder Best Practices

   1. Select and Preview Ad Sizes

      Since publishers for sites across the Google Display Network are able to select which ad formats and sizes they allow on their pages, it's recommended that advertisers create versions for their display ads in all possible sizes. This is to ensure that the ads will fit in all placement options across the Display Network, as some publishers may not permit certain sizes to appear on their pages. Due to the different placement options and inventory available across publisher sites, Google will automatically create your ad in most of the standard IAB ad sizes.

      Each template within the display ad builder may allow you to insert one or more related images and a business logo. The recommended size for each image slot and associated template will be displayed during the ad creation process. Images that are over the file size limit or that don't meet the specifications for the template you select may appear distorted, misaligned, or not appear at all. You should review and resize your images as needed before creating a display ad so that your ad appears properly.

      Consider the following best practices when selecting and previewing ad sizes:

      • Display ad previews: You can preview how your display ad will appear while you're creating it. Be sure to click Update preview whenever you add an image to see how it will appear within your ad.
      
      
      • Review all selected ad sizes: When you create your ad, you'll have the option to select the ad variation sizes we create for your ad. In some cases, these ad sizes may not work well with the size of the image you provided, so be sure to check that your image displays properly in each case. Deselect those sizes for variations where the images won't display properly.
      
      
      • Image editing: Use photo-editing software to edit your image size and format. Transparent 24-bit PNG files look more professional because they match the background of both the image and the ad itself.
      
      

   2. Choose Images and Colors

      One of the key benefits of the Display Ad Builder is the freedom to easily and quickly customize how your display ads look and feel. Doing this can help you reach your target audience more effectively, generating results more quickly. It's important to carefully choose the images and colors for your display ads, ensuring that your selections compliment both the content of your ad and the sites on which your ad appears.

      Refer to the article Experiment with Images, Colors, and Fonts for specific best practices on selecting images and colors for your display ads.

   3. Create Multiple Ad Variations

      Display ads offer so many options that you may need to experiment with different templates, colors, and content to get the best results. Creating multiple ad variations can help you identify the combinations that work best for your campaign.

      • Change color schemes: Changes to the background and font colors of display ads can dramatically increase clickthrough rates (CTRs), which can lead to more impressions and more conversions. Set up your ad, then choose that same template again, change colors, save it in the same ad group, and then let the variations compete against each other. You can then pause the ads that are doing poorly, leaving the best color combinations to lead your campaign.
      
      
      • Try new templates: Performance can vary widely by template. Consider trying out templates with images, no images, various types of animations, and no animations. Minor differences in layout and animations can have large impacts on clickthrough rates (CTRs), depending on your product or service.
      
      
      • Call-to-action: The differences between "Buy it now" and "Learn more" for example, can significantly impact the users propensity to click. Consider trying out several variations, keeping in mind that the call-to-action phrases that you're used to using for text ads may need to be altered for display ads.
      
      

   Best Practices For Display Creatives

   1. Preview and Refine

      You should regularly preview your display ads as you work with the display ad builder to make sure that they produce a resultant ad that you are satisfied with.

      Refer to article Select & Preview Ad Sizes in the earlier part of this lesson for additional details and best practices.

   2. Include Clear Messaging

      To ensure that your marketing message gets across to potential customers, it's important that you include clear messaging when creating your display ads. Below are some basic best practices that can help you create a clear, compelling, and concise display ad.

      • Include a strong call-to-action: Your ad should convey a call-to-action along with the benefits of your product or service. A call-to-action encourages users to click on your ad and ensures they understand exactly what you expect them to do when they reach your landing page. Some call-to-action phrases include "Buy," "Purchase," "Call today," "Order," "Browse," "Sign up," and "Get a quote." While words such as "find" and "search" may be accurate verbs, they imply that the user is still in the research mode, and may not encourage the user to perform the action you'd most like them to take on your site.
      
      
      • Be explicit about your call to action:Include your call-to-action as a button or somewhere else within the ad that will ensure the user understands where to click. This is especially important in display ads, because users may not know what part of the ad is clickable or, in some cases, that your ad is an ad at all. Users also want to know what they can do if they click their ad: "Learn more?" or "Buy now?" Let them know what to expect.
      
      
      • Include prices and promotions: The more information about your product that a user can gain from your display ad, the better. For example, if a user sees the price of a product and still clicks the ad, you know they're interested in a potential purchase at that price. If they don't like the price, they won't click your ad, and you save yourself the cost of that click.
      
      
      • Include key messaging and call-to-action in final frame of animations: Some ads have animated "teaser" text which may enter and exit the ad at various points. If users miss this text, what they end up seeing may not clearly communicate your offering and what they should do. If the action they should take isn't clear, they'll be less likely to click. Including all key messaging and your call-to-action in the final frame of animations can help ensure that your message gets across to your users.
      
      

   3. Experiment with Images, Colors, and Fonts

      You should feel comfortable experimenting with your display ads often, continuously refining images, colors, and fonts to maximize performance. The display ad builder allows you to easily and quickly make changes to your display ads.

      To get the best performance out of your display ads, consider the following best practices:

      • Choose easy-to-view colors: Make sure you've customized the color scheme of your ad, including the background and font color. Try to align the color scheme of the template with the content of your image. Be careful of your color choices; extremely bright colors can be unpleasant or difficult to read. Using the same color for the foreground and background of your ad will also make it difficult to identify items within the image clearly.
      
      
      • Work with the publisher color schemes: If you are placement targeting certain sites, consider tailoring the color scheme of your display ads to match the publishers' pages. If your ad looks unattractive or out of place on a page, users will be less likely to click on it. It's more important to match the sites that you're targeting, than to match your landing page.
      
      
      • Use transparent PNG format images: This can greatly improve the aesthetics and unique look of your display ad. If you don't have a transparent PNG image, make sure your ad color scheme matches the background of your images. If your image has a white background for example, consider setting your ad background to white.
      
      
      • Balance your ad content: Make sure your ad text and images are balanced within the body of the display ad and within the overall ad size. Images should be clear, resized to fit the ad shape, and easy to recognize. All text should be easy to read and understand in relation to the included images and shape and size of the ad in all size versions. Images should not be cut off or unrecognizable, and lines of text should be complete and make sense. Check your ad in each available ad size and resize any images as needed.
      
      
      • Create a visible Display URL: Your display URL should be visible. If it's the same color as the ad's background color, it won't be visible to the user.
      
      

   4. Consider Your Goals

      It's important to consider your goals before selecting an ad format. For example, advertisers whose main goals are to reach the largest number of customers and generate the online sales may want to select different ad formats than advertisers whose main goal is to increase brand awareness.

      Text ads are the simplest ad format available, the easiest to modify, and have the widest reach on the Google Display Network. However, if your goals are capture the attention of your customers in new and visually stimulating ways to enhance your brand, you might want to try something more engaging, such as display ads.

      This module contains guidelines for how to select and refine your display ads for optimal performance. You can follow these guidelines to create your own display ads using the Display Ad Builder, or if you want professional help creating your ad you can use The Google Ad Creation Marketplace to help find an industry expert to assist you.

   Display Ad Policies

   1. Google Display Network Display Ad Policies

      Google's content policies for AdWords text ads also apply to AdWords display ads. Promoting violence, copyrighted content, and drugs are a just few examples of content that is not permitted in display ad content. For a full list of content policies by region, visit the AdWords Help Center.

      In addition to content policies, there are an additional set of policies for display ads that don't apply to text ads. Some examples include avoiding unconventional ad layouts, such as an image that appears sideways or is repeated, or mimicking computer functions. Animations that last for too long, or ads that use strobing backgrounds, would also result in an ad disapproval. For a full list of policies by ad format, visit the AdWords Help Center.

      Also, similar to text ads targeting the Google Display Network, display ads need to be approved as Family Safe status before accruing impressions on publisher sites. If your newly submitted display ads are not accruing impressions, it may be because they are under review.

   2. Display Ad Approvals

      If your display ad has been disapproved per policy, you should familiarize yourself with the policies and edit your ad. When you save your new ad or upload a new ad, it will automatically be submitted for re-review.

4. 8.4 Implement a Campaign and Ad Groups

   Create a New Campaign

   1. Introduction to Creating a New Campaign

      Follow these steps in order to create a new display campaign on the Google Display Network:

      1. Consider your inventory of products or services.
      
      
      2. Create separate ad groups for each product or service that you'd like to promote with a display ad.
      
      You may also wish to create ad groups around central themes that map to your offerings.
      
      3. Choose a template for your ad and customize the text and image.
      
      
      4. Choose your targeting strategy.
      
      

      You may want to start by using contextual targeting for your display ad groups. Contextual targeting allows you to select keywords related to your products so that your ads will automatically be placed on relevant websites.

      You may find that you wish to reach additional customers beyond those you are contextually targeting. To reach these additional customers, you may decide to add managed placements to your campaign, which allows you to choose individual websites and webpages in the Display Network where your ads will be displayed. Using managed placements for your ads on a few sites will enable you to test out the feature. However, if your primary interest is direct response advertising, we recommend focusing mainly on contextual targeting.

      You can also select preliminary targeting options, such as locations and languages, to reach your audience.

      • Language targeting: Your language targeting setting helps determine which users will see your ad, based on the language preferences they've selected. You can select one or more of over 40 languages to target. However, please keep in mind that AdWords doesn't translate your ads, so we recommend targeting only one language per campaign.
      
      
      • Location targeting: You can select any combination of locations to target with your campaign, including countries, territories, regions, cities and custom areas. For example, if you want to reach English-speaking users in select locations, you could target specific regions within the United States and a few large cities in Europe, such as London or Glasgow, where English-speakers are likely to see your ad.
      
      

   2. Bidding and Budgeting Options

      Choosing the best bidding strategy and budget for you is essential to meeting your goals for your display campaign.

      Bidding Strategies Advertisers should choose a strategy that most closely matches their objectives from the below options:

      • Cost-per-click (CPC) bidding: Pay each time someone clicks on your ad, anywhere on the Google Network. Best suited for direct response campaigns.
      
      
      • Cost-per-thousand (CPM) bidding: Pay each time your ad has been shown one thousand times, only on the Display Network. Minimum CPM must be set to at least USD$0.25. Best suited for branding campaigns.
      
      
      • Cost-per-acquisition (CPA) bidding: You determine the most you're willing to pay for each conversion, and the Conversion Optimizer automatically finds the optimal equivalent cost-per-click (CPC) bid for your ad each time it's eligible to appear. Best suited for direct response campaigns.

        When setting up your content bids initially, you should set them to the same level as your search bids. This is just a good place to start when setting up a new display campaign. You can always adjust your bids once you've accrued enough data to analyze your performance at your current bids.

      
      

      How Ads Are Selected

      Placement-targeted ads and keyword-targeted ads compete for placement on pages on the Display Network based on their Ad Rank.

      Ad Rank for keyword- or placement-targeted ad is determined depending on whether the campaign uses CPC or CPM bidding. The Ad Rank for an ad with CPM pricing isn't comparable to that of an ad with CPC pricing. To solve this problem, AdWords calculates an equivalent impression-based Ad Rank for ads with CPC whenever they're in competition with ads with CPM.

      With CPM bidding, your ranking is determined by your bid and your landing page quality. With CPC bidding, your clickthrough rate (CTR) also helps determine your ranking.

      More on CPA Bidding

      If you are using Conversion Optimizer, you can bid using a maximum cost-per-acquisition (CPA). Conversion Optimizer automatically finds the optimal equivalent cost-per-click (CPC) bid for your ad each time it's eligible to appear. You still pay per click, but you no longer need to adjust your bids manually to reach your CPA goals and can benefit from improved ROI.

      Budget Options

      Your daily budget is the amount that you're willing to spend on a specific AdWords campaign each day, on average. When the budget limit is reached, your ads will typically stop showing for that day. How quickly your ads are shown during a given day is determined by your ad delivery setting.

      Learn more about bid optimization best practices.

   Target Your Campaign

   1. Keyword Contextual Targeting

      Contextual targeting is used to match keyword-targeted ads (also referred to as automatic placements) to sites within the Google Display Network.

      This form of targeting better suits advertisers focused on performance and cost-efficient conversions since ads will provide useful information to readers and attract an audience with an established interest in your message.

      To build a contextually targeted campaign:

      1. Define your ad group: Each ad group should have specific themes. Start with themes that are descriptive to the product or service advertised, and avoid themes that are aimed at targeting audiences. If you have a strong and well-recognized brand, consider including branded keywords in keyword-targeted ad groups. Use the Wonder Wheel tool to generate ideas for more ad group themes.
      
      
      2. Generate keywords: Each ad group should have between 5 and 50 keywords. Avoid repeating keywords in the same ad group, and use keywords that are tightly related to the ad group theme. Use the Keyword Tool to help you build your keyword list.
      
      
      3. Set Ad Group Bids: Set your initial Display Network bid at the same level as your search bid. You can always adjust after launching the campaign and evaluating its performance.
      
      
      4. Add negative keywords: This will help to ensure your ads don't appear on irrelevant searches.
      
      
      5. Implement Conversion Tracking: To better understand the performance of your campaign set up AdWords Conversion Tracking. This tool will give you insights into site-level conversion data.
      
      
      6. Optimize: After a few days, check the Networks tab and correct any poor matches by excluding placements and adding negative keywords. Add and remove keywords, pause ad groups that have been optimized and are not performing, and adjust your bidding. You should also add more ad groups that are similar to those that are performing well for you.
      
      

      The position of a keyword-targeted ad on a Display Network page is determined partly by the maximum cost-per-click (CPC) of the keywords in an ad group. Quality Score is also a factor, which is derived from the ad's past performance on that and similar Display Network pages, landing page quality, and other relevance factors.

   2. Managed Placements

      Managed placements are specific sites in the Google Display Network that you specifically select to target. There are two main reasons why you may want to select managed placements:

      1. Placement Management: If you want to run ads on the Display Network, but only on placements you hand-pick, you can select this option in your campaign settings. In this case, you would choose managed placements in the Display Network where you'd like to see your ads displayed and add them to an ad group.
      
      
      2. Bid Management: If you're running ads across the entire Display Network, but you'd like to raise or lower bids for specific placements based on the performance of those websites. For example, you may want to be more competitive for a placement on a particular site to receive more traffic. You can add the site as a managed placement and simply raise your bid for that one placement. You may also see an automatic placement that you don't want to entirely exclude but that doesn't particularly interest you or generate a strong return on investment. You can add it as a managed placement and lower the bid for that website.
      
      

      There are three main ways to add managed placements to an ad group: manually adding, copying from your "automatic placements" table, and using the placement tool. Learn more about the specific steps to add managed placements.

      When picking the sites you wish to add as managed placements, make sure they support your ad formats. Some sites may not run certain ad formats (like banners or wide skyscrapers) or may halt advertising for other reasons. We suggest you experiment with several different placements over time and look for the combinations that work for you.

   3. Enhanced Online Campaigns

      Enhanced Online Campaigns allow you to manage keywords and placements within the same campaign, as well as use keywords and placements together within the same ad group, to more precisely target your ads to the Google Display Network.

      Keywords and placements determine where your ads are eligible to show. When you choose both keywords and placements, you can restrict your ads to the specific sites where you want them to appear, showing them only when the content of a page is relevant to your keywords. Using keywords to refine the targeting for your managed placements is a good option when you're targeting sites that have a wide variety of content (such as news sites and social networks). That way, your ads will be more likely to appear in relevant locations on those sites. Adding keywords also limits the potential number of clicks and impressions, so you should monitor your ad's performance to make sure you're seeing the results you want.

      Where your ads run and how much you pay for them depends on a choice you make in your network campaign settings.

      • Show ads on pages that match the broadest targeting method: With this option, keywords alone determine where your ads are eligible to show. You can add managed placements to an ad group, but their only purpose will be to raise or lower your bid when keyword matching puts your ad on one of those placements. Adjusting bids helps you win more or fewer ad auctions (and therefore clicks and impressions) on those managed placements. So, if you find a site that performs well, you can increase your bid for that site. On the other hand, if you have a site that is performing poorly, but you don't want to completely exclude it, you can adjust your bid to reach your goals.
      
      
      • Show ads only on pages that match all selected targeting methods: With this setting, keywords and placements determine where your ads are eligible to show. When you choose both keywords and placements, you can restrict your ads to the specific sites where you want them to appear -- and show them only when the content of a page is relevant to your keywords.
      
      

   Create a Display Ad Group

   1. Select Your Bids

      There are several bidding strategies that advertisers with display campaigns can implement based on their goals for the campaign. For both managed and automatic placements, you may set a default ad group-level bid as well as placement-level bids. The level at which you bid depends on your desired level of control. Demographic bidding options are also available.

      Bidding Options for Managed Placements

      If you're running managed placements, and you want to maximize your exposure on specific placements, then you should set your bids at the placement level. If you don't need this level of control, you may want to set a default ad group-level bid that will apply to all placements in the ad group.

      You can customize your bidding strategy further by setting a default ad-group level bid in addition to a placement-level bid. For example, you might run your ads across a group of placements with a default bid of US$0.50, but target a specific placement that has been performing well for you with a bid of US$1.00. This would increase the likelihood of your ad appearing on that site.

      Bidding Options for Automatic Placements

      If you are running your ads on automatic placements, you may set a default ad group-level bid as well as placement-level bids. Your keywords will make the first determination of where your ads appear, but you can still add placements to bid more on sites that are performing well for you, and less on sites that are not performing well. For example, you might run your ads across the entire Google Display Network with a default bid of US$0.50, but target a specific placement with a bid of US$1.00 whenever your ad appears there.

      Demographic Bidding

      You may find that a certain demographic is particularly responsive to your campaign. Demographic bidding allows you to increase your bids for specific demographics so that your ads become eligible to show more frequently to users in those demographics. Demographic bidding is only available for certain sites within the Google Display Network.

5. 8.5 Measure Performance

   Introduction to Measuring Performance

   1. Why Measure Performance?

      If you're spending your advertising budget on online marketing, you likely want to ensure that these funds are being used wisely. If you have a good model for measuring ad performance or return on advertising investment, it will be easier for you to respond to changing market conditions, to understand and react to shifts in your customers' behavior, and to make informed calculations about where to invest additional budget or how to reallocate existing budget.

      Google provides several tools to help you measure the performance of your advertising investment. You can use performance metrics on the Google Display Network to understand where your ads are showing, and to optimize your campaigns towards the most effective ad placements.

      Tools and features such as Google Analytics, AdWords Conversion Tracking, and View-through Conversions can provide you with valuable insights into your campaign's performance.

   2. The AdWords Performance Management Environment

      You can also see your performance metrics in the Campaigns tab within your AdWords account. Customize and segment your columns and download the metrics for those columns in a format you choose. Here's a quick overview of the metrics you'll find:

      • Campaigns tab: Organizes statistics for each of your campaigns.
      • Ad groups tab: Organizes statistics for each of your ad groups.
      • Ads tab: Presents relevant statistics for ad variations, such as text ads, image ads, video ads, and local business ads.
      • Keywords tab: Displays details on selected keywords and organizes statistics by keyword.
      • Networks tab: Shows metrics for your campaigns across the Search and Display Networks. The "Automatic placements" and "Managed placements" tables show statistics for ads that appeared on specific domains or URLs in the Google Display Network.
      • Dimensions tab: Presents statistics for your entire account aggregated by other variables, such as time, geography, and demographics. Use the "Destination URL" view to see statistics for your destination URLs.

      View-through conversions: View-through conversion reporting is also available through the Campaigns tab as an optional column for those advertisers who have already implemented Conversion Tracking. View-through conversions provide a deeper level of insight into the effectiveness of your display ads on the Google Display Network by showing you the number of online conversions that happened within 30 days after a user saw, but did not click, on your display ad. 

   Overview of Campaign Performance

   1. General Campaign Performance

      If your display campaign doesn't seem to be ramping up or is not meeting your online objectives, there are some basic steps you can take to help you identify and solve the issue.

      If your display ads are accruing little or no impressions:

      1. Confirm that your campaign, ad group, and ads are active.
      
      
      2. Verify that your ads are approved. Ads that are pending approval or disapproved will not run on the Google Display Network.
      
      
      3. Check that your ad has been marked "Family Safe." Most sites on the Google Display Network only accept Family Safe ads.
      
      
      4. If using managed placements, verify that the placements you're targeting accept display ads in the sizes you have in your campaign. You can do this either through the Placement Tool or Google Ad Planner.
      
      
      5. Confirm that your bid is high enough for your ads to appear. Regardless of the pricing model you've chosen for your campaign, a bid that is too low will prevent your ad from showing. Remember, your bid for a display ad must be higher than the combination of all of the text ads that would have shown in that ad unit in order for the display ad to show. Consider raising your bids if you want to give your display ads a better chance of winning more auctions.
      
      

      If you're more concerned with your return on ad spend or aggregate click or conversion volume, as opposed to the overall traffic your ads are receiving, the most important step you can take to ensuring strong campaign performance is checking to see if your ads are relevant to the inventory you're targeting. You may also want to re-structure your campaign into more tightly themed ad groups.

      Check out Section 12 of the Exam Study Learning Center on Optimizing Performance for more specific tips.

   2. Quality Score and Campaign Performance

      Quality Score is an important component of the AdWords system. For display campaigns, this dynamic metric is used to measure the relevance of your display ads to particular pages on the Google Display Network. Quality Score affects your eligibility to enter the ad auction, the rank of your ad, and the price that you pay in the auction. Ads with better Quality Scores will have better rank and position on the page. Ads with low Quality Score may have to have a higher bid to compete in the auction.

      Three key factors that impact your Quality Score on the Google Display Network are:

      1. the relevance of the ad and the keywords in the ad group to a Display Network page.
      
      
      2. the ad's performance history on a Display Network page and similar pages.
      
      
      3. the quality of your ad's landing page.
      
      

      To improve your Quality Score:

      • Edit your ad to include a clear call-to-action for users.
      
      
      • Verify that your landing page is easy to navigate and relevant to your ad.
      
      
      • Ensure that your keyword list has keywords that relate to a single, clear, specific theme so that your ad is as targeted as possible.
      
      

      A high quality ad creative that is relevant to the keywords within the ad group and the sites on which the ad is appearing will likely have a higher Quality Score, which will help improve the ad's performance on the Google Display Network.

   Campaign Success Metrics

   1. General Campaign Review Best Practices

      Once your campaign is active, it is important to review its performance on a regular basis. It's normally good to wait 2-3 weeks after creating your campaign before reviewing campaign performance too thoroughly. This will give you a larger set of data to work with, allowing you to make more informative decisions.

      By tracking your performance and conversions, you can identify which clicks are more valuable and increase the efficiency of your ad spend. In order to do this, you first should track what your users are doing on your site. With more data about your customers, you can make better decisions about how to run your business. For example, if it's determined that a particular campaign is converting well or generating high user engagement, you can invest more of your budget into bidding competitively on certain ad groups or placements within that campaign.

      It's important to measure the performance of your account on multiple levels:

      • Campaigns: You should start by measuring a few key metrics on a campaign level to understand overall performance.
      
      
      • Ad Groups: Analyzing performance at an ad group level will allow you to better understand whether there are specific ad groups that are contributing more to the performance of your campaign.
      
      
      • Placements: Evaluate the performance of individual placements to see which placements are generating the highest number of conversions.
      
      
      • Ad Creatives: Review the performance of your ads to ensure that your audience is responsive to your message.
      
      

      In addition, consider looking at how performance trends over time. You may see hourly trends or day-of-the-week trends, in which case you can utilize Ad Scheduling to maximize your return on investment (ROI).

   2. Success Metrics For Direct Response Campaigns

      Advertisers with direct response goals are usually more concerned maximizing their return-on-investment than creating brand awareness. The key success metric for direct response campaigns is conversions, since this tells you how many people are completing a goal activity on your site. A goal activity could be any action that a visitor could take on your site that you consider to be valuable, such as purchases or sign-ups.

      Impressions and clicks are less important in measuring direct response campaigns. When you understand which campaigns are driving conversions, you can determine which campaigns are generating the most value.

      Other metrics that you should monitor include:

      • Cost-per-conversion: Represents the amount you paid for a conversion, which should correspond to the value you place on the goal activity.
      
      
      • Conversion rate: Indicates the percentage of visitors who subsequently complete the goal activity.
      
      
      • View-through conversions: Additional conversions that came from people who saw your display ad but didn't click on it, and then later visited your site and completed a conversion.
      
      

   3. Success Metrics for Branding Campaigns

      Advertisers with branding goals are primarily concerned with creating brand awareness as opposed to maximizing conversions. For example, an advertiser that is introducing a new energy drink wants to create awareness and interest among as many sports enthusiasts as possible, and isn't necessarily as concerned with selling actual units of the drink online.

      The key success metrics for these types of campaigns are:

      • Reach: The number of users exposed to an ad. Increased reach means that an ad is exposed to more potential customers, which may lead to increased awareness.
      
      
      • Frequency: The average number of times a user was exposed to an ad over a period of time.
      
      

      Advertisers can increase reach and frequency by managing impressions and cost-per-thousand impressions (CPMs). The Reach & Frequency Report within the AdWords Report Center should be used frequently by advertisers with branding goals to evaluate the performance of their campaigns.

      User engagement with your ads is also an important metric for branding campaigns, and can be measured through clickthrough rate (CTR) or interaction rates for advertisers using rich media. Mouseover rate, which is the percentage of time users mouseover an ad for one or more consecutive seconds, is also a useful indicator of user engagement - although this metric is only available for display ads built with the display ad builder.

   4. Linking Campaign Performance to Conversions

      Cost-per-acquisition (CPA) is an important metric that advertisers use to evaluate campaign performance. This metric is calculated by dividing the campaign spend by the total number of new customers that completed the "conversion event" specified by the advertiser. With AdWords, the tracking of newly acquired customers is done via Conversion Tracking, so CPA is simply calculated by dividing the campaign spend by aggregate conversions.

      Your CPA for both search and display campaigns should be fairly similar as a result of "Smart Pricing" - an algorithm that discounts pricing on clicks that are not likely to lead to conversions. However, you may see greater volumes of conversions originating from search or display depending on the nature of your campaign.

      For display campaigns, Google provides an additional conversion metric, the "view-through conversion", which you can add to your click conversion counts. View-through conversions provide a measure of the number of online conversions that happened within 30-days of a user seeing (an ad impression), but not clicking, on your display ad on the Google Display Network.

      View-through conversions are useful for more accurately measuring the impact of your display campaigns, and for giving you even more performance data to leverage when optimizing to increase response. To implement view-through conversions, you need to have Conversion Tracking enabled, and have checked the box next to "view-through conversions" in the customize columns menu in AdWords.

   Running AdWords Reports

   1. Overview of AdWords Reports

      You can run a wide range of reports on the Campaigns tab to keep track of your ads' performance. Choose whether you'd like the report to run only once or whether you want the report to be automatically generated and emailed on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

      Available report types include:

      • Account performance
      • Ad performance
      • Ad group performance
      • Campaign performance
      • Demographic performance
      • Destination URL performance
      • Geographic performance
      • Keyword performance
      • Placement performance
      • Search term performance

      For general performance statistics on your display campaigns, you should run ad group, campaign, or account reports based on your preferred level of granularity.

      We also recommend that you regularly run placement reports to stay updated on the sites where your display ads are showing. Insight into your performance on each placement will allow you to make informed decisions regarding where to invest your display advertising budget.

      The ad report gives you insight in to the actual performance of your individual display ads. With this report you'll be able to see basic statistics for each individual ad creative, giving you insight in to which ads are performing well and which are not. When you run this report, be sure to choose the appropriate ad variations.

      Learn more about running AdWords reports

   2. Campaign Reports

      The Campaign report within the AdWords interface shows performance metrics aggregated at the campaign level. Use this report to compare performance among your campaigns, or to see high level impact of optimizations on a campaign.

      Campaign-level metrics such as clicks, impressions, average CTR, average CPM, average CPC, conversions, average conversion rate, or average cost/conversion can help to identify campaigns that are meeting your performance goals and to identify campaigns that need to be optimized.

      View results weekly, daily, or hourly to understand how campaign level metrics have changed over time, or if they've been impacted by changes to your campaign.

   3. Placement Report

      The placement report provides site-level performance metrics for ads running on the Google Display Network, and can help you reach your marketing objectives by giving you increased transparency into your display campaign's performance. Use this report to help you manage your campaigns and reach your ROI objectives for the Display Network.

      When taking action on information provided in the report, we recommend you rely on conversion data to guide your decisions. This will help you understand how individual sites are converting for you, which is a more meaningful metric for evaluating performance on the Google Display Network than other metrics, such as clickthrough rate (CTR).

      Below are some suggested use cases for the report:

      • For sites that are meeting your ROI objectives, consider targeting them specifically through managed placements.
      • For sites that are not meeting your ROI objectives after having accrued significant traffic, consider lowering your bid on these sites or excluding them from your campaign with the Site and Category Exclusions Tool.
      • If you find your ads are appearing on irrelevant pages, take steps to optimize your keywords and ads. Consider adding negative keywords to refine your ad targeting.
      • Identify sites that are converting well for you and consider allocating additional budget to these placements. Use our Display Network bidding feature to adjust your Display Network bids separately from your search bids.

6. 8.6 Optimize and Refine

   Introduction to Refining and Optimizing

   1. The Value of Optimizing

      Optimization can help you achieve your goals for your display campaigns by improving the quality and performance of your account. The optimization strategies featured throughout this lesson have been designed to help you identify and address areas of opportunity within your campaigns.

      Identifying where you may be able to make improvements to your display campaigns will help you understand how to maximize your success on the Google Display Network. Best practices around ad group expansion, keyword expansion, and placement targeting can help you expand your reach without sacrificing relevance. You can also identify areas that may be performing relatively well, but could benefit from further refinement through additional targeting options such as adding negative keywords, implementing site and category exclusions, and refining your ads and keywords to be more tightly themed.

   Reviewing Google Display Network Campaigns

   1. When to Make a Change

      Before making any significant changes to new display campaign, it's important that you've given it enough time to establish and accrue performance history. Doing so will help you understand the full potential of your display campaign performance and allow you to decide on whether or not changes are necessary.

      Here are a few best practices to keep in mind when reviewing and making changes to your new display campaign:

      Week 1 of Campaign Launch

      • Immediate Monitoring: Check within a day after you launch your new campaign to make sure it's active and accruing impressions and clicks.
      
      
      • Correct Your Targeting: Within two to three days, check the Networks tab to exclude sites and add negative keywords to correct straight-forward cases of poor targeting matches. An example of poor targeting would be "bra" ads appearing on sites about "Bra, Italy."
      
      
      • Check Setup Consistency: If you notice a large number of clicks but little or no conversions, check your ad creative and your landing page to make sure they are well-matched. For example, if you are a furniture store that is selling sofas, be sure that your landing page directs users to the section of your website that features sofas instead of sending them to the general furniture homepage. You should also verify that your conversion code is set up correctly. Try generating a conversion yourself and then check your account to see if the conversion was recorded.
      
      

      Week 2 + of Campaign Launch

      • Wait For Critical Mass of Data: Before making significant changes, such as changing bids, excluding additional sites, or pausing ad groups, wait until enough click or conversion data has accrued. Before making significant changes, consider waiting until your campaign has accrued five or more conversions and 100 or more clicks per site. If you are focused on metrics other than conversions, you should wait until enough volume (impressions) has accrued.
      
      
      • Evaluate Performance Regularly: Once you have everything in place, be sure to check your campaign performance periodically to ensure that it is still performing to your satisfaction.
      
      

   Refining Google Display Network Performance

   1. Using Google Display Network Controls

      There are several methods for refining the performance of your display campaigns on the Google Display Network.

      • Negative Keywords: Negative keywords are a great way to help prevent your ads from showing on Display Network pages with irrelevant themes. Choosing your negative keywords carefully can effectively limit the number of untargeted clicks and impressions received by your display campaign and improve your return on investment (ROI).
      
      
      • Site and Category Exclusion: Site and category exclusion allows you to exclude irrelevant sites or topics that you do not want your ad to appear on in the Google Display Network. You may choose to utilize exclusions once you've gained an understanding of where your ads are appearing (likely through the use of Placement Performance Reports), and how they're performing on those placements. Once you have an idea of the types of sites or topics that you want to exclude, you can go directly to the Site and Category Exclusion Tool to apply these exclusions to your campaign. Advertisers who choose to not show up on a particular type of content (e.g. video sharing sites, social networks, etc), can proactively exclude specific sites or categories of sites before their campaign launches. Site and category exclusions can also be modified once the campaign is live.
      
      
      • Refining Keywords: When contextually targeting, creating tightly themed keyword lists will help to ensure that your ads are appearing on relevant sites within the Google Display Network. Having a large keyword list with general keywords may cause your ads to show up on irrelevant sites that seem related to your business, but really aren't (such as an ad for "java" coffee showing up on a JavaScript site). Refining your keywords to be more specific will help you target the right types of sites.
      
      

   2. Extend Your Reach

      Expanding on already successful strategies can help you to extend the reach of your display campaign's performance. Here are a few techniques to consider when optimizing for reach:

      • Expand on successful ad groups: Take a look at all of your ad groups from within your display campaign and identify those that are the meeting your campaign objectives. For ad groups that are performing well, consider expanding into additional ad groups that are related to those themes. Use the Wonder Wheel tool to help you with finding related themes to target.
      
      
      • Increase bids for successful sites: For sites where your display ads are performing under your target cost-per-acquisition (CPA) goals, consider raising your bids on these sites to maximize placements of your ads. You can also decrease bids on sites that are not meeting your campaign objectives. You can identify sites that are performing well, in addition to those that are performing poorly, by generating a Placement Performance Report (PPR) for your display campaign or reviewing this information directly through the Networks tab in your AdWords account (under the "Auto placements" section).
      
      
      • Expand on successful sites: If you are using placement targeting, review all of your site performance and identify sites that are doing well for you. Consider expanding your success by targeting other similar sites. Use the Ad Planner to help you with finding sites to target.
      
      

   3. Bid Optimization Best Practices

      Adjusting your bids for your display campaign to best meet your return on investment goals is yet another important aspect of effective optimization. If your campaign cost-per-acquisition (CPA) is below your CPA goals, you should raise your bids to increase acquisition volume. By the same token, if your campaign CPA is too high relative to your goals, you should lower your bids until your target CPA is met.

      Here are some additional best practices to consider when optimizing bids for display campaigns:

      • Adjust your bids across multiple levels: You should adjust your bids at both the ad group and campaign level towards meeting your CPA goals. For managed and automatic placements, you should adjust your bids at the site-level, increasing them for sites that have good conversion performance and decreasing them for sites that have weaker conversion performance. You should also set your default ad group level bid to a level that is appropriate for the average performance across all the placements within that ad group.
      
      
      • Implement demographic bidding: If you know that a particular demographic is responding better to your ads than other demographics, you can take advantage of demographic bidding to ensure that your ads show more frequently to that particular demographic, while still meeting your CPA targets.
      
      
      • Don't adjust bids too frequently: It is import to avoid adjusting bids too frequently as it can take a while for the effect of your new bid to be fully realized. Making multiple changes at one time also makes it very difficult to attribute success (or failure) to the appropriate changes. Instead of managing bids on your own, you can also use solutions like Conversion Optimizer to manage the day-to-day adjustments of bids towards your CPA goals.
      
      

   Advanced Google Display Network Optimization Features

   1. Ad Scheduling

      Ad Scheduling (also known as "day parting") lets you tell Google exactly when you want your ads to run, and more importantly, when you do not want them to run. In addition, more advanced users can automatically modify their bids based on time-of-day and day-of-week cycles in campaign performance.

      Ad Scheduling can help you with improving ROI for your display campaigns by ensuring that your ads show at times where it performs the best. For example, if you notice that you are getting the most conversions from Monday to Friday and nothing on Saturday and Sunday, you can schedule your ads to appear only during those times so that you are maximizing your ad's performance with your given budget.

      There are two ways in which you can utilize Ad Scheduling for your display campaigns:

      1. Scheduling Specific Bids: When you create an ad schedule, you can specify bid multipliers to raise or lower your bid during certain hours or on different days of the week. For example, if you find that your ads get the best results between 8:00 and 11:00 a.m., you can bid more for impressions or clicks during that period. Learn more about the bid adjustment mode of Ad Scheduling.
      
      
      2. Scheduling Specific Times: You can set an ad schedule for particular hours of the day, or specific days of the week. In most campaigns, you can include bid adjustments for particular days or times. To determine when you want your ads to show, you may want to run an hourly report. This would show you what time during the day your ads received the most valuable traffic. Learn more about how to set up your ad schedule.
      
      

   2. Conversion Tracking

      Conversion Tracking is a free Google Tool that allows you to track your conversion goal such as a purchase, signup, page view, or lead on either Google.com, the Search Network, or the Display Network. We highly recommend that you use Conversion Tracking in conjunction with your display campaigns, as it will provide you with insights on whether or not your campaign is meeting your conversion goals.

      When you have access to conversion data in your reports, you can make smarter online advertising decisions, particularly about what ads, keywords and sites you invest in. Given better data, you can better measure your overall return on investment (ROI) for your display campaigns.

      Let's look at an example:

      Jane owns an online business that sells gourmet chocolate. She knows how many conversions her display campaign is getting, but would like to know specifically which sites are converting into sales. With basic Conversion Tracking, Jane can get this important information.
      
      Once she has this valuable performance data, Jane discovers that a majority of her conversions are coming from sites related to chocolate recipes. She can now optimize her display campaign by expanding on other ad groups themes related to chocolate recipes, thus maximizing her campaign's ROI.

      Conversion Tracking is an essential feature that will help you identify where you are doing well on the Google Display Network, and where you need to improve. Knowing this information will allow you to make changes or edits to your account in order to improve your overall Display Network performance.

   3. Conversion Optimizer

      The Conversion Optimizer is a feature available through AdWords that uses your AdWords Conversion Tracking data to get you more conversions at a lower cost. It achieves this by optimizing your placement in each ad auction to avoid unprofitable clicks and get you as many profitable clicks as possible for your campaign.

      Benefits of implementing Conversion Optimizer include:

      • Increased profits: Gets you more conversion at a lower cost.
      
      
      • Easy to use: Improves AdWords' ease of use with less time spent managing bids, since the feature does a lot of the work for you. It's easy to turn on, as well.
      
      
      • No additional charge: No extra fees or new interfaces to learn.
      
      

      Conversion Optimizer works best for advertisers whose goals are mostly conversion and direct-response oriented. Advertisers also need to have already installed Conversion Tracking for Conversion Optimizer to work.

      For display campaigns, Conversion Optimizer can help improve performance by using data from Conversion Tracking to determine where your ads are likely to get conversions. Conversion Optimizer will automatically calculate the optimal equivalent cost-per-click (CPC) bid for your ad each time it's eligible to appear on a Display Network site. You still pay per click, but you no longer need to adjust your bids manually to reach your cost per acquisition (CPA) goals and can benefit from improved return on investment (ROI). This in turn can help you save time and maximize your conversions.

      Learn more about how Conversion Optimizer works and the requirements for using the tool.

   4. Demographic Bidding

      Demographic bidding on the Google Display Network allows you to change your bid by age range and gender, or choose to only show your ad to certain age groups or genders. Not all sites in the Google Display Network allow demographic bidding. The full list of sites available for demographic bidding can be found in the AdWords Help Center.

      To see performance metrics by demographic:

      • Login to your AdWords account
      
      
      • Select a campaign
      
      
      • Select the Settings tab
      
      
      • Under Locations, Languages, and Demographics click on "Demographic (Advanced)"
      
      
      • Click on Edit
      
      

      The performance metrics available by demographic include impressions, clicks, clickthrough rate, cost, conversions, conversion rate, and cost per conversion. You can view all of these metrics by gender and age. If you find that a specific gender or age group performs particularly well for you, consider increasing your bids on these sites. You may also want to decrease your bids for genders or age groups that are not meeting your performance goals, or exclude them from your campaign entirely. If you have a specific target audience, use demographic bidding when setting up your campaign to specify your customer and show ads to a specific age range and gender.

   Additional Google Display Network Tools

   1. Optimizing with Ad Planner

      In addition to being a powerful media planning tool Google Ad Planner can also be used to optimize existing display campaigns by finding additional, highly cross-visited placements and sites that target your audience but are not currently in the campaign.

      To find supplemental sites for your campaign, first click the Research tab in your Google Ad Planner account. You can then search for additional sites that your target audience also visits based on your campaign's top performing sites by following these steps.

      1. Click the Search by audience tab.
      
      
      2. Audience: Select or specify criteria accordingly --such as geography, language, demographics, etc --in the drop-down boxes at the top of the page.
      
      
      3. Enter in URL of top performing sites from your campaign based on avg. CPA and/or CTR into "Sites visited" tab
      
      
      4. Filter: Be sure to select appropriate Ranking Method based on campaign goals and objectives:
      
      
      • Best Match: Recommend for performance driven campaigns. Displays a balance of large and small targeted sites.
      
      
      • Composition Index: Recommend for very direct response campaigns. Displays smaller sites more targeted to your defined audience.
      
      
      • Audience Reach: Recommended for branding and awareness focused campaigns.
      
      
      5. As you select all the appropriate filters your site list will dynamically update and reflect the changes made.
      
      
      6. After you're done selecting all the filters, review your site list and select the ones that are qualified good fits and are not yet in the campaign
      
      
      7. Export your selected site to Excel
      
      
      8. Remove "GCN " from all the placements in order to add to campaign successfully.
      
      

   2. Wonder Wheel

      Wonder Wheel is a powerful tool for building and optimizing display campaigns. The tool visually presents connections between related searches and your search term as an interactive diagram, allowing you to brainstorm new ad group themes and keyword lists. You can also use Wonder Wheel to help you build on successful themes that are already present in your display campaign.

      For example, let's say that you sell exercise equipment through an online store. One of your ad groups that is centered around exercise mats is doing very well and you'd like to build out other, more specific ad groups around that theme. By entering the theme "exercise mats" into Wonder Wheel you can get up to eight additional ideas for related ad group themes, with the ability to click on each to generate even more ideas. For example, you may get results for themes like "fitness mat" "gym exercise mat" or "folding exercise mat" that would be beneficial to incorporate into your campaign.

      Learn more about how to use Wonder Wheel to build new display campaigns.

   3. Keyword Tool

      The Keyword Tool can help you build an extensive and relevant keyword list for your new contextually targeted display campaign, as well as to refine your existing keywords. Learn more about how to use the Keyword Tool to build out new keyword lists.

      To understand how to use the Keyword Tool to refine your existing campaign, consider the following:

      1. Find additional keywords based on your existing keywords. If you noticed that an ad group theme is performing well for you, then you may want to consider expanding on that keyword list to maximize your Display Network performance. Simply enter in the high-performing keyword from your ad group keyword list into the Keyword Tool to get additional suggestions. The tool will also give you related keywords to consider at the bottom of the results, which are a great way to get additional ad group theme ideas.
      
      
      2. Find negative keywords based on existing keywords. If you notice that your display campaign is appearing on irrelevant sites, you can also use the Keyword Tool to help you find negative keywords. Enter in a keyword from your ad group that is generating clicks on irrelevant sites to find related keywords. Evaluate the resulting keyword list and choose those that are not relevant to your ad group theme to add as negative keywords.
      
      
      3. Find keywords on successful placement sites. If you notice that your campaign is performing particularly well on a specific contextually targeted site, then you may want to consider targeting other similar sites by adding similar keywords. You can use the Website Content option within the Keyword Tool to determine the type of keywords that may be triggering your ads to that site. The AdWords system will then scan the page of the site and suggest relevant keywords for you to expand on.
      
      
      4. Find negative keywords based on irrelevant placement sites. You can also use the Website Content option to find negative keywords on sites that you do not want to appear on. Just insert the undesirable site to generate a list of related keywords. Choose those that you want to add as negative keywords to prevent your ads from appearing on those types of sites.
      
      

      Whether you're building out a new keyword list or refining your existing list, here are a few best practices to keep in mind:

      • Create small tightly themed ad groups: Try to keep ad groups to around 5-50 keywords. Be sure that there is a clear and identifiable theme for your ad group.
      
      
      • Set your keywords to broad match: All keywords' match type are translated to broad match on the Google Display Network.
      
      
      • Use specific keywords: Ensure keywords are specific enough and only have one meaning to avoid your ads appearing on irrelevant sites. For example, the keyword "java" for an ad on Java coffee probably isn't specific enough and could result in the ad appearing on sites about JavaScript. "Java coffee" would be a better keyword for this ad.
      
      
      • Avoid duplicate keywords in the same ad group: Use different variations of your keywords to target a variety of relevant sites on the Google Display Network. Check out the Wonder Wheel tool for ideas.
      
      

   4. Google Analytics

      Google Analytics is a powerful tool that advertisers can use when refining and optimizing their display campaigns. Google Analytics enables advertisers to view more detailed information about the performance of their campaign than is available through AdWords Conversion Tracking. Analytics also allows advertisers to see performance data about referring sites and pages on their site that are not part of their campaign.

      By viewing AdWords campaign data within the Google Analytics user interface, advertisers can see whether visitors explored your site, how long they stayed on the site, and your conversion metrics and funnels. This deep insight into how users are interacting with your site, enables you to adjust bids based on the quality of the visits.

      Google Analytics can also be used to identify new and better performing sites to include in your display campaigns. You can see which sites referred visitors with the most time spent on site. If your find that a particular site is already a part of your display campaign, use this information to bid up or down, based on the quality of the traffic. If the site is not part of your campaign, consider adding it.

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