Cdmp-10 m5 Paid Search and Display Study Notes

PAID SEARCH AND DISPLAY
ADVERTISING
Study Notes
SEO (SEARCH ENGINE

OPTIMIZATION)
Study Notes
Paid Search and Display Advertising Copyright © 2023 digitalmarketinginstitute.com 1

Paid Search and Display Advertising
LESSON 1: FUNDAMENTALS OF PAID SEARCH ........................................................................... 5
PAID SEARCH ...................................................................................................................................................... 6
What is paid search? ...................................................................................................................................... 6
Why use paid search? .................................................................................................................................... 6
SEARCH ENGINES................................................................................................................................................ 7
How consumers use search engines .............................................................................................................. 7
How paid search has evolved......................................................................................................................... 7
PPC CAMPAIGN ELEMENTS ................................................................................................................................ 8
Elements of a search engine campaign .......................................................................................................... 8
Aligning the campaign to the searcher .......................................................................................................... 9
Keyword lists .................................................................................................................................................. 9
Driving quality traffic ................................................................................................................................... 10
Good ad copy ............................................................................................................................................... 10
Landing pages .............................................................................................................................................. 10
Qualities of good landing pages ................................................................................................................... 10
GOOGLE ADS .................................................................................................................................................... 11
What is Google Ads? .................................................................................................................................... 11
Google Ads accounts .................................................................................................................................... 11
THE ROLE OF KEYWORDS IN GOOGLE ADS....................................................................................................... 11
Keyword match types .................................................................................................................................. 12
Negative keywords....................................................................................................................................... 13
Keyword lists and ad groups in Google Ads ................................................................................................. 13
PPC KEYWORD RESEARCH ................................................................................................................................ 14
What is keyword research? ......................................................................................................................... 14
Google Keyword Planner ............................................................................................................................. 15

BUDGETS AND BIDDING IN GOOGLE ADS ........................................................................................................ 15
Budgets ........................................................................................................................................................ 15
Bids............................................................................................................................................................... 15
CREATING A PPC CAMPAIGN ............................................................................................................................ 16
Elements of a paid search campaign ........................................................................................................... 16
PPC best practices ........................................................................................................................................ 16
LESSON 2: DEMAND GENERATION WITH DISPLAY AND VIDEO ADVERTISING ........................ 19
DISPLAY AND VIDEO ADVERTISING .................................................................................................................. 20
The role of video and display advertising .................................................................................................... 20
Display and video advertising vs paid search marketing ............................................................................. 20
GDN, AI, AND PERFORMANCE MAX ................................................................................................................. 21
What is the Google Display Network? ......................................................................................................... 21
GDN campaign types .................................................................................................................................... 21
Campaign goals ............................................................................................................................................ 22
DISPLAY AND VIDEO AD FORMATS .................................................................................................................. 22
Ad sizes ........................................................................................................................................................ 22
Responsive display ads ................................................................................................................................ 22
YouTube ad formats ..................................................................................................................................... 22
TARGETING FOR DEMAND GENERATION ......................................................................................................... 23
What is targeting? ........................................................................................................................................ 23
Types of targeting ........................................................................................................................................ 23
Audience targeting ....................................................................................................................................... 23
Content targeting ......................................................................................................................................... 24
REMARKETING FOR DISPLAY AND VIDEO CAMPAIGNS .................................................................................... 25
What is remarketing?................................................................................................................................... 25
What is Google Ads Editor? ......................................................................................................................... 25
LESSON 3: MEASURING AND OPTIMIZING GOOGLE ADS CAMPAIGNS ................................... 28

PAID SEARCH KPIS AND CONVERSION TRACKING ............................................................................................ 29
The role of key performance indicators (KPIs) in paid search campaigns ................................................... 29
What is conversion tracking? ....................................................................................................................... 30
PAID SEARCH METRICS AND REPORTS ............................................................................................................. 31
Key campaign metrics .................................................................................................................................. 31
PPC BUDGET MANAGEMENT ........................................................................................................................... 32
Managing your advertising budget .............................................................................................................. 32
BIDDING IN GOOGLE ADS ................................................................................................................................. 33
What is the bid auction? .............................................................................................................................. 33
Quality Score ................................................................................................................................................ 33
SEARCH, DISPLAY, AND VIDEO CAMPAIGN OPTIMIZATION ............................................................................. 36
How to optimize your campaign .................................................................................................................. 36
PAID SEARCH AND ADVANCED MEASUREMENT .............................................................................................. 36
Using Google Analytics................................................................................................................................. 36

LESSON 1: FUNDAMENTALS
OF PAID SEARCH

PAID SEARCH
What is paid search?
Before we look at the fundamentals of paid search or pay per click (PPC), let’s begin by asking: What exactly is
paid search?
Paid search is an inbound marketing channel that allows you to match your product or service with potential
customers, who are looking for what you have to offer. By using advertising tools such as Google Ads, you can
choose a number of keywords that your customers typically use when researching or buying your product or
offering. So then, when they search, your business shows up in the top position in Google’s search engine
results page (or SERP).
Paid search is different from search engine optimization (or SEO). With SEO, you need to create website
content that is likely to show up on the search engine – because the content is relevant to what the customer
is searching for.
On the other hand, with paid search, you simply:
1. Choose the keywords that you want to show up in #1 position on Google, for example.
2. Enter your lists of keywords into the advertising tool, such as Google Ads, Bing Ads, Amazon Ads, and
so on.
3. And then write some ads that will be relevant when someone looks for any of the keywords on your
lists.
Then, on the customer-facing side of Google, when someone searches using those keywords, you can show up
as a sponsored search ad at the top of the search results. When you group related keywords into lists in the
paid search advertising tool, you can write ads that will be suitable for any keyword on that list.
For example, if you sell electronics goods, you should group all your radio keywords into one list, and then
write an ad that talks about the radios you sell. However, if you also sell TVs and you included TV keywords in
your list, your radio ad isn’t relevant. This is why you always need to group keywords with similar themes
together and write an ad that would be relevant to all the keywords on that list. In this case, you would have
two keyword lists: one for radios with a radio ad, and another for TVs with a TV ad.
In relation to the ‘paid’ part of ‘paid search’, if the searcher clicks on your ad, you have to pay a fee, called a
cost per click (or CPC). However, you don’t pay if they don’t click your ad. So you only pay for clicks, or basically
when someone chooses your ads over the paid search ads of your competitors.
Why use paid search?
The value of paid search is that it helps you to very quickly get to the top of the search results without you
having to create any extra content for your website. So, when people input keywords to perform a search, ask
questions, or look for something, you can show up as the answer. Your ad becomes the solution to their needs,
or the answer to their question.
But how can you ensure that you become the answer to their question? Much like SEO, you need to research
and anticipate the types of keywords that people are likely to use when researching or buying your product.
However, rather than creating content from this keyword research like you would with SEO, you simply enter
these keywords in the advertising tool. Then, when people search for these keywords, you show up!

The great advantage of paid search is that, overall, it is much faster than SEO in terms of driving traffic, sales,
and conversions. But the obvious drawback is that you have to pay for it. This is why it’s so important to
include both SEO and PPC in your digital marketing strategy. Then you are not overly reliant on paid traffic,
because this can be costly in the long run. So finding the right balance between both PPC and SEO is key to
success.
SEARCH ENGINES
How consumers use search engines
Let’s now take a moment to consider how consumers use search engines. As a marketer, you should always
put yourself in the mind of the user. For example, think about the consumer purchase decision journey:
1. They identify a need or want.

2. They search for solutions.
3. They evaluate alternatives.
4. They decide to purchase.
5. They purchase.
6. They do their post-purchase evaluation, to confirm whether they made the right choice.
Search behavior (both PPC and SEO) features in the second to final stages of this decision-making journey. This
makes Search a highly effective channel to tie in with consumer purchase decision-making.
For the most part, PPC features heavily in stages 3, 4 and 5. These three stages involve evaluating alternatives,
deciding to make a purchase, and then purchasing. SEO, on the other hand, features more heavily in stages 2
and 3, when users are searching for solutions and evaluating alternatives. So, while there is some crossover
between PPC and SEO in the various stages of the journey, it’s important to use both to cover the entire
process and drive sales, leads, and conversions.
How paid search has evolved
Paid search, or PPC, has been a highly effective sales and marketing channel for a number of years now. Also, it
has evolved over that time as technology has advanced and consumer search behavior and expectations have
changed.
It began in the early 2000s as search engines became popular. This was when user habits, technology, and
businesses were developing online. New features have been added to enrich the advertising formats, but the
fundamentals remain the same.
Ultimately paid search consists of three elements. These are:
Keywords
Ads
Landing pages

PPC CAMPAIGN ELEMENTS
Elements of a search engine campaign
Let’s now look at the three basic elements of a paid search campaign in more detail.
Keywords are the cornerstone of paid search advertising. You start out by giving Google a list of
keywords in its advertising tool, called Google Ads. This can be in the form of traditional keywords, or
keyword signals for more automated campaign types such as Performance Max campaigns. This tells
Google to serve, or show, your ads on the results page when people search for those keywords. For
example, if you sell sunglasses, then you would add the phrase “buy UV sunglasses” to the Google Ads
interface as a keyword that you want to show up for when potential customers are looking online.
Ads are what users see when they do a search on a search engine. You should write your ad in a way
that answers the user’s search query. Think of it like this. The user searches using a keyword which
you anticipated they would use. This is why you included this keyword on your keyword list. When
they search, Google shows them your ad. For relevance, when you write your ad, you should try to
include the main keywords from your list in that ad. This then means that, when users search, they
will see the keyword which they are looking for in your ad. When you include your keywords in your
ads, searchers naturally think your ad is relevant to what they are looking for and are more likely to
click through to your website. For example, if the user searches for your “buy uv sunglasses” keyword,
you will get more clicks if your ad also says “Buy UV Sunglasses”. By doing this, you’re connecting the
ad to the original search in the minds of consumers, making it more relevant to their needs.
Landing pages are where the user ‘lands’ after they click an ad. The landing page should be relevant
to the keyword and the ad for optimum results. So, if a user searches for “buy uv sunglasses”, and
then clicks on your ad which says ‘Buy UV Sunglasses’, they are going to expect to be brought to a
landing page where they can buy UV sunglasses.
This is the simple three-step journey of keywords, ads, and landing pages. Always anticipate what questions
your customers will ask when they are searching. These are your keywords!
The role of the searcher
Take a moment to consider how people use search engines, such as Google. You can think of Google as a
question-and-answer machine. An evolution of this is how search engines are incorporating more AI chat
features as part of the experience. When they use search engines, people ask it all kinds of questions.
Keywords are questions. People are literally telling Google what they want, and we (as marketers) can
see these questions. You can research what people look for in relation to topics and products then
choose the most appropriate phrases that people use to buy or research as your keywords.
Ads are the answers that you give to these questions.
And landing pages are where you take people to. They are where we take searchers to in order
complete the action that they started by searching in the first place.
For example, suppose someone is looking to buy an iPhone. You’ve already included the keyword ‘buy iphone’
in one of your keyword lists, known as ad groups. So, when people search for ‘buy iphone’ on Google, they see
your ad and they might choose it over your competitors.
Then, if they click on your ad, they are brought to your landing page. Hopefully, you’ve set up this ad to land
them on the iPhone section of your website. There, they can continue their journey and buy an iPhone from
your ecommerce store.

Remember, the most important thing is to align keywords, ads, and landing pages. This will help to create a
simple journey for your customers to take action from their initial search through to conversion.
Aligning the campaign to the searcher
So now, let’s consider this question: What do we, as search marketers, need to do to align our search
campaigns to searcher needs? Again, think of the three key elements of search: keywords, ads, and landing
pages.
1. We need to anticipate the questions that people are asking and choose these as keywords.
2. We then need to write ads that answer these questions better than our competitors do. This
enables us to position our product as the solution to their needs.
3. When they click our ad, we need to bring them to a landing page. This landing page should allow
them to take the action to resolve their need. For example, they might buy a product, call a
phone number, download a piece of content, and so on.
In summary: they’ve asked for something, we’ve given our answer, and then we’ve brought them to a landing
page. We’ve created the conditions that enable them to easily complete a purchase or call us, because we are
the solution to their needs!
Keyword lists
Obviously, it can be difficult to predict exactly what keyword your consumer is going to use when searching.
This is why keyword lists are so important. These are lists of keyword phrases that you would like your ads to
show for when a potential customer searches online.
In paid search, a keyword list is called an ad group. It’s basically a way of organizing your keywords and
managing your ads. Ideally, ad groups should contain between 1 and 15 closely related keywords. Then, each
ad group should have at least one ad that will be relevant if someone searches for any of the keywords in your
ad group.
Ad groups and keyword lists
So, how can ad groups and keyword lists be created to drive business objectives?
Search intent: Consider creating ad groups around the type of search intent. Consider whether
they’re looking for information (Top of Funnel Searches), consideration (Middle of Funnel), or
conversion or sales queries (Bottom of Funnel).
Exhaustive list of keywords: It is important to have an exhaustive list of keywords that your target
audience is likely to search for. To help you manage your activity, these keywords should be organized
across multiple ad groups. Having a range of quality keywords is essential for building coverage and
ensuring your brand is visible for the most valuable searches in a buyer’s journey.
Keyword functions: It’s also important to know the function of each keyword and assign budgets to
keyword campaigns, depending on the part they play in a conversion.
Negative keywords: Use negative keywords to cut out unwanted searches, such as low conversion or
high cost search queries and bad brand associations.

Driving quality traffic
The aim of PPC is to drive quality traffic from interested searchers to your website or app. How can you do
this?
Consider the need state of the searcher and how this can be addressed by your product. What do
they want to hear about your product to make your product seem more appealing than the
competition based on their need state?
Include your most important keywords from each ad group in the ad copy. This will help increase
perceived relevance to drive higher CTR or clickthrough rates. Consider including special offers in your
ads and always include a CTA to direct their action towards your business objectives.
Good ad copy
Remember, as well as keywords, ad text or ad copy is an essential part of any paid search strategy. If you think
of a search query – which is what someone types into Google – as a question, the next thing we have in the
journey is the response. The response itself is your ad copy, so ask yourself: What do you want to tell potential
customers when they search for certain topics online?
So, what are the elements of good ad copy?
The ad must be relevant: It should contain the keywords the searcher used and be written in a way
the searcher understands. Remember you chose the keyword so you should have a good idea of what
they’re looking for. This insight will help you write compelling ads.
The ad copy must be attractive: This could mean including an offer or a Unique Selling Proposition
(USP) or what’s called an Emotional Selling Proposition (ESP).
The ad copy must be directional: Now that you’ve engaged the searcher’s attention, you want to
direct them towards what you want them to do next, perhaps to purchase something or download an
ebook for example. Use a CTA or call-to-action to encourage them to take the action you want them
to take.
Landing pages
Landing pages are the third essential element of your search campaign. But what exactly is a landing page?
Essentially, the landing page is your website. You control this zone and should ensure that it’s closely linked to
your ads and keywords. It should also align with user intent, using directional CTAs to drive towards business
objectives. The landing page should deliver on the promise of the ad and resolve the user’s need state. It also
needs to be aligned to the ad copy. In other words, it needs to be relevant, attractive, and directional.
Good landing pages are related to what the searcher typed into Google, as well as the ad copy that they
clicked. This increases the relevance of the search experience. If the relevance level is high, the searcher is
more likely to engage with the page content.
If you include CTAs, you can direct the searcher to take action on your website. This can be in the form of
buying a product, downloading a document, or filling out a contact form, for example.
You should take the entire search experience into account when choosing or designing landing pages for
search campaigns.
Qualities of good landing pages
When evaluating your landing pages, first consider the search journey.

To recap:
1. The user has a need.

2. They look for solutions online.
3. They click your ad as it’s closely aligned to their need.
4. They land on your website.
So, when looking at your landing pages, ask yourself these questions:
Does your landing page deliver on the promise of the ad? Does it resolve the user’s need state?
Is the landing page aligned to the ad? In other words, is it relevant, attractive, and directional?
GOOGLE ADS
What is Google Ads?
So, what is Google Ads? Well, it is an advertising service by Google for businesses that want to show ads on
Google properties. It’s most commonly associated with paid search. But advertisers can also use Google Ads to
run the following ads and campaigns:
Google display campaigns, banner ads, native ads, and so on

YouTube video ads
Ecommerce shopping campaigns
Google Ads accounts
Now, let’s ask ourselves: What are the types of Google Ads accounts available to advertisers? And how do they
differ?
A standard Google Ads account
A standard Google Ads account is basically a single account that can contain numerous search, display, and
other campaigns, ad groups, ads, and keywords.
Bear in mind, though, that you can create more than one standard account. You might, for example, have
separate Google Ads accounts for each client. Or you might manage numerous Google Ads accounts through a
Manager account. When a Google Ads account is managed through a Manager account, the Google Ads
account is called a child account. Which brings us to the Manager account…
Google Ads Manager account
A Google Ads Manager account is used to manage multiple standard Google Ads accounts. In this case, these
standard accounts are called child accounts of the Manager account.
THE ROLE OF KEYWORDS IN GOOGLE ADS
Remember, keywords are one of the three foundational elements of a paid search campaign. But what are
keywords, exactly? Well, they are what consumers input into a search engine to find your product.
Your role as a digital marketer is to anticipate customer needs and use tools to research the types of keywords
that your consumers are likely to input into search engines. Then, you can refine the suggestions the keyword

tool gives you and choose the most appropriate keywords related to your product, its benefits, and your
consumers’ needs.
Keyword match types
Needless to say, it is difficult to anticipate exactly what keywords your consumers are going to use. This is why
match types are so important.
Match types are settings in the advertising tool that allow you to widen or narrow the reach of your ads so you
can show up for lots of partially related searches or only on precise searches. When it comes to choosing
match types, it’s basically a choice between reach or relevance. Do you want to show up for lots of searches,
even if some are irrelevant? Or do you want to show up only one relevant search, even if this greatly reduces
the number of search results?
Google will bridge the gap between what your keyword is and what a searcher actually puts into the search
engine, based on the match type you choose for your keywords. You tell Google how precisely you want the
search to match your keywords.
Match types are usually signified as:
Broad match, with no symbols before or after the keyword

“Phrase match”, with quotation marks before and after the keyword
[Exact match], with square brackets before and after the keyword)
Broad match
A broad match gives you most reach and clicks. Google will show your ads even if someone misspells your
keyword or enters a loosely related topic.
This is usually the most expensive match type, however… it does increase your reach. If you enter just a few
keywords on broad match into Google Ads, your ads will show on thousands of different searches related to
those keywords. So if you use ‘Hotels New York’ on broad match in your campaign, your ad can show up for
searches like ‘Bed and Breakfast in Manhattan’.
Broad match will show your ad for all searches that are related to your original keyword, even if none of the
original words in the keyword are included in what the searcher types into Google.
Phrase match
A phrase match gives you some reach, but the words in your keyword must be included in what searchers type
into Google. This is the second most expensive match type, as it gives you some reach but not as many clicks as
broad match.
Phrase match means your ad will show up on closer aligned searches. For example, if you have ‘Hotels New
York’ on phrase match, your ad can show up when people type in things like ‘Best Hotels for Families in New
York’. However, it won’t show up for ‘Bed and Breakfast in Manhattan’, because this search doesn’t contain
‘hotels’ or ‘new york’.
So you show up for more related topics with broad match, but not all of them will be relevant to your offering.
Phrase match gives you some reach but only when the core elements of your keyword are used when people
are searching. This helps to drive reach but also more relevant traffic to your website.

Exact match
An exact match, as the name implies, gives you precision, but not a lot of reach. It is typically the cheapest
match type in terms of CPC.
Basically, your ad will show up only when the searcher types your keywords exactly into Google. There is some
flexibility around minor misspellings and plurals, but for the most part they have to type your keyword exactly
into Google.
The drawback is that, if you want to show up for lots of different searches, you need lots and lots of keywords.
With broad and phrase matches, on the other hand, you need fewer keywords because Google will show your
ads to searches that are close to your keywords, but they don’t have to match them exactly.
For example, if you have the keyword ‘[Hotels New York]’ on exact match in your campaign, your ad will only
show up when people type ‘Hotels New York’ or minor deviations (such as ‘Hotels in New York’), but it won’t
fire if they type in ‘Bed and Breakfast in Manhattan’ or ‘Best Hotels for Families in New York’. This is because
these are too different from the original exact match keyword.
Best practice
As you can see, each match type has its advantages and disadvantages. You need to decide between amount
of reach and amount of relevancy. Choosing appropriate match types can help save you time and money by
optimizing your reach to target audiences.
It’s good to test a mix of match types in your campaigns as it can lead to lower costs per click. This is because
Google will charge different amounts for the same keyword on different match types.
Negative keywords
Negative keywords is a setting you can use to ensure you don’t show up for certain searches because these
searches might drive poor ROI or reflect poorly on the brand.
Common negative keywords are ‘free’ and ‘jobs’. Think about it like this. A company selling Sony products
wouldn’t want to get clicks from people looking for Sony jobs or free Sony products. Unless you are advertising
free products or job listings, these are good keywords to add to your negative list.
You can then build out your negative keyword list based on what you know about your product and
consumers. This will stop Google matching your keywords to irrelevant searches.
Well-built negative keyword lists will help reduce costs, increase CTR and conversion rates, and make your paid
search activity more effective.
Keyword lists and ad groups in Google Ads
Ad groups
Now we’ll move on to ad groups. These are how you organize your lists of keywords by theme. So, after your
keyword research is complete, you might have one large keyword list consisting of many keywords – hundreds
or even thousands of keywords. All are related to your products, but with subtle differences.

So, to help manage all these keywords, you can segment them into smaller lists based on related themes, and
save these smaller keyword lists as ad groups in Google Ads. Ad groups with fewer keywords in them tend to
perform better because each ad group has an ad linked to it. This means that when someone searches for a
keyword in the ad group, they’ll see the ad text that’s linked to that ad group. When you have two to five
closely related keywords in an ad group, you can write an ad that is highly specific to all those keywords
because the meaning or theme of the small number of keywords will be similar. However, if you have an ad
group with 50 keywords that are partly related to each other, the ad won’t be so relevant to all 50 keywords
because their meaning will be too different. So smaller ad groups with closely related keywords work best.
So what’s the best practice for creating ad groups? The key is to group between 1 and 15 keywords in an ad
group. Remember, they must be quite similar in theme. Otherwise, the ad associated with that ad group won’t
be as relevant to all keywords in the group.
Campaigns
Having created your ad groups, you can then organize these ad groups into campaigns. This helps to make
your ad groups more manageable.
By organizing your ad groups into campaigns, you can then manage how much the combined costs of these ad
groups spend each day. For example, you might have all ‘hotel’ ad groups in one hotel campaign, and all ‘self-
service apartment’ ad groups in another self-service apartment campaign.
This type of organizational structure enables digital marketers to easily manage thousands of keyword lists and
how much they spend on each.
PPC KEYWORD RESEARCH
What is keyword research?
Let’s now return to another fundamental element of paid search: keywords.
To increase your chances of selecting the right keywords, you first need to carry out keyword research. This is
a way to create lists of keywords related to your product or service – using tools like the Google Keyword
Planner, which is built into Google Ads. You can then expand or restrict the reach of your keywords using
match types.
Keyword research for PPC vs SEO
All search marketing activity requires keyword research. However, you use different keyword research
strategies for PPC and SEO.
Because PPC is paid, it generally focuses on driving search traffic with direct commercial intent. Although SEO
will also have a commercial aspect, it can also focus on non-commercial, research-based search queries that
can result in conversions over time.
Typically, the keywords you would use in paid search campaigns are those that people use just before they
take action, such as ‘book a hotel in new york’ or ‘buy an iphone case’. When people type these keywords into
Google, they are looking to take action. In other words, they may have done their research already and are
ready to convert. Since you are paying for the traffic, you’ll want to get a quick return on investment in terms
of sales and leads.

Google Keyword Planner
You can use Google Keyword Planner to help with your keyword research. It brings several benefits:
It gives structured research options: Search marketers spend a lot of time on keyword research.
However, the ideas that the Keyword Planner gives you are structured in a way to help you quickly
decide whether to use them in your campaign.
It shows keyword search volume trends: You can see how often people search for these keywords in
the different months of the year. This is good because it helps you to prioritize keywords and
understand seasonality for products or industries.
It suggests keyword ideas: Even with careful research, there may be some keywords that you might
not have previously considered. The Keyword Planner can make suggestions based on historical,
current, and emerging search trends. You can then decide whether to include these keywords in your
campaigns.
BUDGETS AND BIDDING IN GOOGLE ADS
Budgets
At the risk of stating the obvious, the difference between SEO and paid search is that you have to pay for paid
search. And this involves budgeting and bidding. Let’s start with budgeting.
Your budget is the amount that you are willing to spend each day on your campaign. This is the most
important cost metric in Google Ads because this is how much you are willing to pay for clicks each day. Your
ads will keep showing each day until you reach your daily budget limit.
When your campaign spends its daily budget, your ads will not show up on Google for the rest of the day.
However, sometimes Google will spend a little more than your daily budget if there is lots of market interest in
your keywords. Then it will spend less on other days in the month to balance the overspend.
Bids
Now let’s consider bidding.
Your bid is the amount you are willing to pay for a click. You can set bids manually, but it is recommended that
you use the automated bidding strategies in Google Ads. Google will then use artificial intelligence (or AI) and
machine learning to help you reach your campaign objective.
Common objectives that influence bid strategy types include driving as many clicks, conversions, or conversion
value (in revenue terms) for your daily budget. There are other bidding strategies around impressions or how
often your ads show up on Google. However, these can be suboptimal if you are trying to drive conversions or
sales.
Automated bidding uses several factors – such as searcher browsing history, past campaign performance, and
so on – to show ads to people who are most likely to:
Click on your ads (if clicks is your objective)

Convert (if conversions is your objective)
In other words, Google uses automation to try to spend your daily budget only on clicks from people who are
most likely to help you achieve your objective.

CREATING A PPC CAMPAIGN
Elements of a paid search campaign
Your paid search campaign will typically comprise the following elements:
Campaign name
Location
Language
Daily budget
Multiple ad groups
Ad groups
Remember, you can organize your keywords into ad groups. You can have multiple ad groups in a campaign,
and you can cap the combined spend of all your ad groups in a campaign with your campaign daily budget. In
other words, all ad groups in that campaign share a daily budget, and all the ad groups combined won’t spend
more than your daily campaign budget.
Ads
For each ad group, you should aim to create at least one ad. So, when someone searches for any of the
keywords in your ad group, they will see the ad associated with that ad group.
Remember the importance of having smaller ad groups with tightly related keywords! If you have an ad group
with hundreds of keywords, it would be impossible to craft an ad that’s relevant to all those keywords. So keep
your ad groups small and relevant to drive the best performance.
Assets
Don’t forget your ad assets. These can enhance the clickability and performance of your PPC by adding
elements such as site links, call outs, and other relevant assets to your ad. Review all asset options available
and include what’s most relevant to your business and customers.
PPC best practices
Ad text
Now that you understand how ads work in paid search, let’s consider some PPC best practices.
First, you need to understand how important your ad text (also called ad copy) is. As you might guess, this is
the text in the ad that will appear as a result on Google after someone searches.
And, when an ad is shown on a search engine, you say an ad has been served.
Here are some tips to bear in mind when writing ad text:
Character limits apply to ads. Don’t worry about accidentally going over the limit, though. Google will
alert you if you create an ad that has more characters than is allowed.
Remember that your ads are associated with ad groups, not individual keywords. This means that
several keywords can show in the same ad. (As mentioned before, you don’t have to create an

individual ad for each keyword.) This is why it is really important to ensure your ad groups are
organized thematically, with related keywords.
Well-written ad copy will improve searcher experience with your brand and drive more clicks. It can
also increase conversions by directing searchers with a call to action, or CTA – for example, “sale ends
Sunday, buy today!”
Ad assets
Assets, previously known as ad extensions, provide context on the nature and variety of your products and
services before visitors click through to your site. They give users more reasons to click your ad, leading to
improved visibility and an improved clickthrough rate (or CTR).
Assets include elements such as phone numbers, promotional offers, and quick links to your page or website
to your PPC ads. These enhancements increase the size of the ad on screen and make it more likely to be
clicked by the searcher. When you use ad assets, you can actually reduce the amount you pay for a click, as
Google can reward you for putting effort into creating good PPC ads by increasing your quality score. With a
higher likelihood of clicks and potentially lower costs, there are only good reasons to use ad assets!
Have a look at the different types of ad extensions available to you and choose the most appropriate one for
your own or your client’s business objectives.

NOTES

LESSON 2: DEMAND
GENERATION WITH DISPLAY
AND VIDEO ADVERTISING

DISPLAY AND VIDEO ADVERTISING
The role of video and display advertising
Video and display advertising are outbound awareness- and demand-generating digital channels. They
combine both the science and precision of online audience targeting, which means they’re highly relevant,
with the emotional engagement of audio/visual, and creative visual formats that capture the attention of the
audience and make the most of your advertising placements.
Both display and video have the potential to increase brand awareness for your brand or product
amongst your target audience.
You can generate demand from customers after you’ve raised their awareness and got them
interested in your brand or products.
You can drive consideration for your brand or products within your target audience with visual
advertising formats.
You could create purchase intent, free your products or services with highly targeted advertising that
clearly displays your products to the user.
You can choose to increase the reach, broad or narrow, of your content across a large target
audience.
You can drive frequency of the exposure to re-enforce your brand messaging.
You can engage and re-engage with customers with display and video remarketing. This can mean
upselling additional products to past customers or encouraging non-converting website visitors to
complete their purchases.
You have the opportunity to choose from multiple types of ad formats to fit your advertising needs
when choosing display or video.
And finally, video especially can be used to complement TV buying strategies in capturing the
audiences online that might not be captured by TV.
Display and video advertising vs paid search marketing
It’s important to distinguish display and video advertising (which are push channels that spread a message),
from paid search marketing (which is a pull channel, in that it captures existing demands).
Paid search marketing is about showing ads to people who are actively seeking your product, so they have a
certain amount of consumer intent for your products or services.
Both display and video advertising serve ads to people who are on Google partner websites and/or browsing
YouTube, and match your audience targeting criteria. Be aware they may not be in the market for your
product at the precise moment when they see your banner ad, compared to the level of interest that a
potential customer performing a search has. However, they could fit your target audience profile and may be a
potential customer in the future. This is why video and display are regarded as awareness-driving channels.
Paid search marketing is used to reach people at the end or near the end of the buyer’s journey. Video and
display, on the other hand, can reach people at all stages of the buyer’s journey. However, its main strength is
in reaching people at the beginning of the buyer’s journey – in other words, the awareness stage.

GDN, AI, AND PERFORMANCE MAX
What is the Google Display Network?
The Google Display Network is the display and video advertising channel that allows advertisers to serve
YouTube and display ads to their target audience using the Google Ads interface.
The GDN, as it’s often referred to, reaches over 90% of people on the internet globally. It allows advertisers to
connect with their customers and potential customers with text, image, rich media, and video advertising.
Almost any website can sign up to be a Google partner through the AdSense program and become part of the
GDN. (Apps can sign up through the AdMob program.)
In return, Google will pay websites and apps to show banner and video ads on Google’s behalf. The GDN can
help you reach people while they’re browsing websites, reading the news or blogs, shopping, or looking for
travel inspiration, and watching video content on YouTube video, for example.
On the GDN, you can remarket to people who have been on your website before and may or may not have
converted. You can then show them a tailored ad to increase your conversions and/or brand awareness.
GDN campaign types
You can choose from several campaign types available on the GDN:
Display: Your ads are shown on websites and mobile apps that include content that’s related to your
business or to your customers’ interests.
Video: Your ads are shown on YouTube based on your audience targeting or content choices, such as
channel or video themes.
Discovery: Your ads shown as native ads on Google properties such as Gmail, YouTube, and the
Chrome home screen on desktop or mobile device, based on your audience or content targeting
choices. Native ads look like normal organic content. For example, when you see the preview
thumbnails on YouTube, you might also see an ad in the mix. This is a native format. It looks like it’s
just normal content but it’s actually a paid placement.
Performance Max: Your ads are shown on Google Search, Shopping, Gmail, YouTube, and all Google
properties based on audience signals and other automated targeting options that are defined by
Google. Performance Max is actually a blended search and display campaign type that uses AI and
automation to drive traffic from people searching on Google and browsing content on Google
properties like YouTube, Google Shopping and Gmail. It serves search ads, banners, and video ads all
from the same campaign type and daily budget. Much of the targeting is done in the back end of the
system. You don’t really see the keywords or placements where the ads are shown, so there is less
visibility with performance max versus standard display or search campaigns. For ecommerce
businesses, it’s always useful to include Performance Max as part of your campaign mix so you can
avail of shopping ads via Google Merchant Center.
Furthermore, Google Ads periodically rolls out new campaign types like the AI-powered Demand Gen and
Video Views campaign types. These use Artificial Intelligence capabilities to help you reach your audience and
objectives in a cost-efficient way.

Campaign goals
When you begin building your display or video campaigns, you can choose from three defined goals, which are
aligned to the broad stages of buyer’s journey:
Building awareness: giving you the opportunity to reach new customers.

Influencing consideration: educating your audience about your unique selling points.
Driving action: being strategic and putting a message in front of the right customers at the right time.
DISPLAY AND VIDEO AD FORMATS
Ad sizes
Advertisers who design and create their own display ads with the help of a graphic designer or design agency
can upload both animated and static image ads to their campaigns on the Google Display Network. All file sizes
must be 150kb or lower and formatted to specific pixel sizes.
Some of the most commonly used sizes include:
300 x 250 Mid Position Unit (MPU)

728 × 90 Leaderboard
120 × 600 Skyscraper
160 × 600 Wide skyscraper
320 × 50 Mobile banner
Responsive display ads
Creating responsive display ads makes it easier in many ways for advertisers to run display campaigns on the
GDN. Responsive display ads are created in the Google Ads interface itself and they often use the images from
your website to create the ad, so you don’t need to use a graphic designer.
What are some of the benefits of responsive display ads?
You don’t need to create multiple ad sizes. One responsive ad can suit leaderboard, MPU, or
skyscraper.
Responsive ads work on both mobile and desktop devices which saves production costs.
Images for responsive ads are usually taken from your website so you can use your own assets.
Ads can be edited and updated without the need for a graphic designer.
Generative AI features are being rolled out as part of display ad creation, which can help improve
creative assets.
YouTube ad formats
There are a number of ad formats to choose from on YouTube:
TrueView In-stream: Your video ad plays before, during, or after other videos. After five seconds, the
viewer has the option to skip the ad. This ad format gives users a choice to engage with your
advertising.
Audio Ads: Play audio ads to people listening to YouTube music and other audio-only YouTube
channels.

Bumper Ads: These are non-skippable video ads of up to six seconds that must be watched before a
video can be viewed.
It is usually recommended that you create separate ads for each format. This is because each format fulfills a
different objective so the ads you create should be appropriate for the format to ensure they are well-received
by your target audience.
However, as part of its AI drive, Google is rolling out generative AI features to help you create new horizontal,
square, or vertical video ads using your existing YouTube video assets. This will help you show your ads to
more people on different device types. Keep an eye out in the Google Ads interface for the latest AI additions
to the platform.
TARGETING FOR DEMAND GENERATION
What is targeting?
As a digital marketer, you’ll want to ensure that your display and video ads are seen by the right people – in
other words, people who are likely to buy from or engage with your brand. To do this, you need to use careful
targeting.
Targeting allows you to show your banner or video ad to your desired audience and on the most relevant
websites and apps – in places they are likely to be. Taking the time to choose the most effective targeting
options increases audience engagement by ensuring ads are shown to the most relevant audience as often as
possible.
Optimizing your targeting reduces the chances of budget being wasted on low-value impressions or clicks from
people who are unlikely to buy from you. It also increases the likelihood that campaigns will deliver positive
return on investment, or ROI, in terms of generating awareness or assisting conversions via other channels.
Types of targeting
Video and display campaigns offer two types of targeting:
The first type is audience targeting: What type of people do you want to show your ad to?
And the second type is content targeting: What types of websites or apps do you want your ad to be
shown on?
When you target audiences, it’s based on their interests. They can be on any website when they see your ad.
When it comes to content targeting, you are showing your ad because of the website’s content, regardless of
what the visitors of that website are interested in.
Next, we’ll look at both targeting types in more detail.
Audience targeting
What is audience targeting?
The first type of targeting available in video and display campaigns is audience targeting. This enables you to
target the people who see your ads based on their interests and characteristics.

For example, you might want to show ads to people who, based on their browsing history, indicate they are
interested in online shopping. You can show these people ads on any GDN site, even if the site isn’t about
shopping. This is because you are targeting the audience rather than the website content they are currently
on.
Audience targeting takes a number of forms.
Demographic targeting allows you to reach people who are likely to be within the age, gender,
parental status, and income level that you choose.
Affinity audiences are lifestyle and interest profiles based on the user’s browsing behavior.
In-market audiences are users who, based on their browsing behavior, are likely to be in the market
to purchase a specific product or service, or to take a valuable action.
Remarketing targets users who have previously visited your site, browsed your ecommerce products,
engaged with your content on YouTube, used your mobile app, or provided you with their email
address.
Custom audiences are specific audience options created by you using a mix of keywords, interests,
and websites or apps that your audience uses. These can be quite important for Performance Max
and other automated or AI-powered campaign types.
Content targeting
What is content targeting?
So that was audience targeting. Now, the second type of targeting available on video and display is content
targeting. With content targeting, you aim to show your ad on a website or app because the content themes
or types contained on that website or app align with your own product offering.
For example, if you’re a travel agency, you might choose to show your ads on a travel website. Anyone can
visit a travel website so you’re not targeting the audience’s interest. Instead, you’re showing your ad there
because of the content of the site itself. People interested in that content are likely to be interested in your
ads.
You can target your ad to specific content in a number of ways:
The first is to use keywords: Your ads will be displayed beside any written content that contains your
keywords. Bear in mind that these are not Google search keywords. What happens is that if a word
appears in an article, blog, or video title, description, or tag then your ad is likely to show up beside
this content.
You can also use topics: This enables you to reach a broad range of websites, apps or YouTube
channels, related to the themes you select. When websites sign up to show ads as part of the Google
Display Network, Google puts these websites in different theme categories so you can target lots of
websites all at once. For example, you might target travel websites or tech websites.
A third way to target your ads is to use placements: Placement targeting allows you to choose specific
websites (or sections of exact websites); YouTube Channels or Videos; or mobile apps that you would
like to show your ad on. For example, you might choose to only show ads in the sports section of a
specific news website.

REMARKETING FOR DISPLAY AND VIDEO CAMPAIGNS
What is remarketing?
Remarketing – or sometimes still known as retargeting – lets you show ads to people who you’ve previously
engaged with online, whether they visited your website, used your mobile app, or watched your videos on
YouTube. Or they may be part of an email database that you have permission to market to.
Remarketing can be a strong and strategic component of your advertising strategy. It can deliver a return on
investment for all types of advertisers. By targeting people who’ve previously engaged with you online, you
have access to people who are the most likely to buy your product. And when people leave your website
without buying anything, for example, remarketing helps you reconnect with them by showing relevant ads
across their different devices. By using remarketing, you can show Google ads to your previous site visitors
while they browse the vast number of Google partner sites in the Google Display Network.
Remarketing on GDN
Your remarketing lists allow you to reach users as they browse millions of Google partner websites and apps
on their mobile, tablet, desktop, or smart TV, for example. You can tailor your remarketing lists to align with
your marketing goals, and because these audience lists are so highly targeted, they’re very efficient when it
comes to costs and pricing.
There are a number of options when it comes to remarketing on the display network:
Standard remarketing shows banner and video ads to your past visitors as they browse websites,
watch videos, check their Gmail, and use mobile apps, and so on.
Dynamic remarketing allows you to show the exact product a person has just viewed on your
ecommerce store as part of your banner ads. It is often used in Performance Max campaigns that
contain a Google Merchant Center shopping feed.
Remarketing for mobile apps shows ads to people who have used your mobile app or mobile website
as they use other mobile apps and browse other websites.
Video remarketing allows you to show ads to people who have interacted with your videos or
YouTube channel as they use YouTube and browse Display Network videos, websites, and apps.
Customer Match using Email-list remarketing allows you to upload a list of customer emails to
Google Ads and show them ads as they browse the internet or YouTube. With Customer Match, when
those people are signed in to Google Search, YouTube, Chrome, Gmail, and so on, you can show them
your ads.
What is Google Ads Editor?
Google Ads Editor is a free piece of software that you can download to your computer. It enables you to make
bulk changes to Google Ads accounts. As you make changes on your computer, you can bulk edit campaigns
offline and upload when you’re ready.
This means that mass changes can be made quickly. Also, you can get a comprehensive snapshot of all of your
campaigns in a concise view.
Benefits
Googles Ads Editor brings several benefits.

You can make tens to tens of thousands of changes to your account in a very short time.
You can make your changes offline, and then apply them when you are ready. This means you can
check your work to ensure there are no mistakes.
So why should you use Google Ads Editor? Well, you should use it when you are making multiple changes to
your Google Ads account. It is also very useful when you have a lot of new data, such as negative keyword lists,
to add.
Features
Google Ads Editor offers the following features:
Make mass bid updates.

Pause or activate keywords, ad groups, campaigns, or ads.
Create new ads.
Add negative keyword lists.
Modify bid strategies, assets, and other campaign elements with ease.

NOTES

LESSON 3: MEASURING AND
OPTIMIZING GOOGLE ADS
CAMPAIGNS

PAID SEARCH KPIS AND CONVERSION TRACKING
The role of key performance indicators (KPIs) in paid search campaigns
Key performance indicators, or KPIs, should reflect your business goals and how they can be achieved online.
KPIs for measuring the success of your search campaign include conversion traffic, awareness, and brand
impressions.
Conversions
Conversions are those valuable actions that users take on your site, such as buying something or filling in a
form. They can be direct conversions and assisted (view-through) conversions. We’ll look at these in a bit more
detail shortly.
The success of a campaign can be measured in the number of conversions generated at a particular cost. This
determines your ROI. And campaign KPIs can be set in terms of conversions because they are the metric that
will align your campaign activity with your business objectives. Conversions are a really important metric to
consider when choosing to spend more or less on a campaign to optimize performance.
The function of Google Ads is to drive qualified search traffic from users looking for your product or clicking
your banner ad. This traffic can result in conversions if your site is optimized to user expectations and your
offering is aligned with their needs.
Generally, search campaigns drive direct conversions. In other words, people search, then click your
ad, and buy or convert after clicking.
On the other hand, display campaigns lead to assisted conversions. These campaigns ‘assist’ in
conversions. For example, you show your banner ads to your target audience. They might then go
ahead and convert or buy a few days or weeks later, rather than clicking on the banner then buying
immediately. This is also known as post-impression or view-through conversions, and it measures
your ads’ influence on a conversion.
Awareness
Another key performance indicator that you can use to measure the success of a campaign would be
something like awareness. So, if you do a lot of wider searches, or broad searches, do you get your brand
name out there? Can that then be attributed to things such as increases in brand searches?
If you need to drive awareness, building lists of relevant generic keywords will expand the reach of your
offering beyond the people who already know and search for your brand. Generic keywords tend to have
higher CPCs and lower conversion rates. This is why it’s important to measure the success of your generic
campaigns in terms of reach and acceptable cost per conversion.
Brand impressions
A third KPI to consider is brand impressions. Brand searches tend to be low-cost and high-conversion types of
keywords. However, for most businesses, brand impressions and clicks tend to be lower than generic searches.
Therefore, driving a higher number of brand searches should be a goal of all organizations because, as your
brand searches increase, you will get more low-cost conversions from your campaigns. This can also act as a de
facto measure of your brand growth.

What is conversion tracking?
Now that you understand the important KPIs for paid search, let’s move on to conversion tracking. This is a
way to measure valuable actions, or conversions, that people take after they click your ad. It could reveal, for
example, the number of sales or leads generated from your ads. Google can measure this in different ways,
the most common way (and usually the default setting on your campaigns) is data-driven measurement. This
is where Google Ads looks at all customer touchpoints via digital marketing analytics tools like Google
Analytics 4 for a conversion. It then uses this data to show the influence of your campaigns on driving overall
sales or conversions.
Types of conversions
Most websites will have different conversions with different outcomes and values to the business. So what
type of conversion are you going to measure?
Is it the number of leads you’ve generated?

Is it the number of purchases that have gone through the website from a click?
Is it the number of phone calls that were generated through Google Ads?
Is it the number of app downloads?
This means that you need to review your website to understand what a conversion is. It’s usually something
that someone does that is valuable to your business. Take the time to review what valuable action can be
taken on your site. How can you measure them?
Once you have taken note of all your valuable website actions, or conversions, you can set them up to be
tracked in the system. And you can then link them back to, or attribute them to, a click and therefore a cost.
This will help you determine ROI.
Benefits
So why should you use conversion tracking?
It enables you to track the number of valuable actions taken by users back to the campaign and
keyword.
As your campaigns will have costs and generate other metrics, conversion tracking helps you to
determine if the campaigns are profitable or scalable.
Adding conversion tracking to Google Ads
There are two main ways to add conversion tracking to Google Ads:
The first and most basic method is to add a piece of HTML tracking code (found in the main menu) to
the ‘thank you’ or confirmation page following a conversion. This is the page that shows after the
customer contacts the team or completes a purchase. It usually says something like, “Thank you for
your purchase!” This page is only ever displayed after a conversion, so every time it’s displayed, your
tag on that page tells Google Ads that a conversion has happened.
The other (easier and more useful) method is to import conversions and ecommerce transactions
from other sources such as Google Analytics, or your Customer Relationship Management (or CRM)
tools such as HubSpot, Salesforce, and so on. With ecommerce transactions, you can see which
campaigns are driving most sales and revenue when you like your ecommerce store to GA4, while
CRM imports enable you to track sales made by salespeople back to your campaigns.

PAID SEARCH METRICS AND REPORTS
Key campaign metrics
Campaign measurement can go beyond pure conversion tracking which is the end goal of the journey. You can
use a number of metrics to help drill-down into the inner workings of your campaigns:
Impressions: The number of times an ad is shown to searchers and to target audiences with display or
video campaigns
Clicks: The number of times an ad, keyword, campaign, or ad group and so on has been clicked
Cost per click (CPC): The average price paid for each click in a campaign
Clickthrough rate (CTR): The percentage of people who were shown your ad and then clicked your ad
Cost per impression (CPM): The cost of serving a batch of 1,000 impressions
Conversion: The number of valuable actions that result from your PPC or display activity, such as a
purchase, lead form completion, and so on
Conversion rate: The percentage of clicks that drove a conversion
Cost per conversion: The amount you spend divided by the total number of conversions. This shows
you how much it costs to generate a sale or conversion using media spend. This is sometimes referred
to as CPA or cost per acquisition.
Assisted (view-through) conversions: The number of conversions that were assisted by a particular
campaign, ad group, or keyword – for example, when someone is shown your display or video ad but
converts via another channel like PPC at a later stage, usually within 30 days of seeing the display ad
Using filters
You can use filters in Google Ads to help you to focus your attention on specific metrics and parts of your
campaigns that optimize the performance. Then you can make optimization decisions.
For example, you might look at all the keywords that drive 10+ conversions. You could then decide to give
more focus to these high-performance keywords by restructuring your campaigns or writing content based on
your best keywords.
Alternatively, you might look at things like the audience types that get low CTR. You could then remove them
from your campaign because they might be irrelevant. After all, those audiences aren’t clicking your ads!
Google Ads reports
Did you know that you can run several reports in Google Ads to measure the success of your campaigns? In
fact, you can run reports on the different levels of Google Ads as a way to understand performance in a
detailed way.
These reports include, among others:
Campaign report
Ad Group report
Keyword report
You can export these reports, manipulate the data, add graphs, and so on. Simply select the level of report you
want from the menu and download the report.

PPC BUDGET MANAGEMENT
Managing your advertising budget
Budget management determines what you are willing to spend. This is what a particular campaign or, indeed,
a particular group of campaigns within an account will spend in a day multiplied over 30 days to see the
aggregate spend for the month itself. When you are assigned a marketing budget, you have to know what
percentage of the marketing budget you want to give to different campaigns.
And the way you understand that is based on what that campaign does. So, is it a campaign that converts quite
readily, like a brand search campaign? Perhaps it’s a high-volume generic campaign? Or is it a long-tail
keyword campaign? What exactly is it? Understanding how to allocate your budget is essential to knowing
what the best way is to optimize your daily spend.
So how do you determine how you can allocate your budget? First, consider how you structure your
campaigns by how many conversions they drive. Also, take into account priority market locations and themes.
Bear in mind, from time to time, you will hit budget ceilings and your campaigns will be ‘limited by budget’,
which means that you could spend more. This can be a useful notification, if the metrics are right for the
budget limited campaign. Suppose you are getting lots of conversions or a low cost per conversion from that
campaign , you might decide to increase the budget to the level Google recommends. However, you don’t
have to if you don’t want to – it’s just a recommendation.
Google Ads offers many different ways to spend your advertising budget. This includes the following:
Daily spend: Google Ads allows you to control exactly how much you want to spend each day on a
campaign level, so you’ll never spend more than you’ve budgeted for.
Times of the day and days of the week: Ad schedules allow you to control when your ad is shown, so
you can make sure your budget is spent when it has the biggest impact. Bear in mind that this is only
effective for campaigns using manual bidding. Automated bid options will already optimize your ad
schedule to show your ads at high-impact times according to the focus of your automated bid
strategy. Your focus might be to, for example, maximize clicks or maximize conversions.
Managing daily spend
Let’s now deep-dive into managing your daily spend.
Each campaign has a daily spend. By structuring your account correctly, you can manage your daily spend,
which, in turn, ultimately translates into your weekly or monthly spend.
Putting keywords and ad groups with similar search volumes into one campaign means that you can set higher
budgets for high-volume keywords and lower budgets for low volume keywords.
Remember, all ad groups and keywords in a campaign share the same daily budget. So, if you put low-volume
keywords in the same campaign as high-volume keywords, the high-volume keywords will spend all the
budget. This then means that lower-volume, long-tail keywords, which might be high value in terms of
conversions, might not get shown to searchers (because your high-volume keywords have already used up the
budget).
So, remember: keywords that get a lot of traffic will spend a lot of money. You might want to group those
keywords that spend a lot of money in campaigns that are high-traffic campaigns. Then consider keywords that
spend less money because they have less search volume and less search interest in traffic. They will spend a lot

less. So, because you don’t want them sharing the same budget, you can separate them out. That is a good
optimization tactic and a very good way to consider your budget management strategy as part of your process.
Budget trackers
As you can imagine, managing an advertising budget can be a daunting task! This is why budget trackers are
so useful.
You can use a budget tracker to keep your spend under control. But what exactly is a budget tracker? It is
simply a document to measure how much you have spent against your monthly, weekly, or daily budget. By
tracking how much you’ve spent in the month to date versus the total budget, you can see if you are spending
too much or too little to ensure your spend is on track.
BIDDING IN GOOGLE ADS
What is the bid auction?
Now, let’s return to some basics for a minute. Paid search, as the name implies, involves paying for ads that
drive your search campaign. Each time a user clicks one of your ads, you pay for that click.
But how do you actually pay for clicks? What does Google do to decide how you pay for a click? Well, the
starting point of that is the bid auction.
A bid auction is when all the different advertisers are bidding and competing for positions on the Search
Engine Results Page (SERP) for a certain keyword. There, a number of factors determine what the actual cost
per click will be. These include the maximum cost per click, or CPC as determined by your automated bid
strategy, the quality score of your search keywords and display campaigns, the perceived relevance of their
ads, their ad rank, and so on.
All advertisers who are competing for a click will be evaluated automatically in the backend of Google to
determine the best ads to show. Google uses metrics like quality score (which we’ll look at shortly) and other
internal factors (which we don’t always have access to) in order to decide the bid auction. Finally the position
each PPC ad appears on the SERP will be determined by the ad rank metric for each advertiser. The advertiser
with the highest ad rank is shown in the top position.
Quality Score
Quality Score is a measurement of how relevant and how good your ad and keyword combinations are versus
what Google thinks your audience is looking for. Quality Score is visible for search campaigns, but Google
doesn’t show Quality Score for display or video campaigns – so you typically optimize Quality Score in relation
to paid search.
Improving your Quality Score is the best way to cost-effectively increase the position of your paid search
keywords without relying on additional spend. Having a high Quality Score means you pay less to appear in
high positions than competitors with lower Quality Scores.
The main factors that determine a quality score are:
Your bid (as determined by your bid strategy)

The perceived CTR of your ad
Your landing page relevance

There are a number of other factors, too, but these are the most important. You generally have a Quality Score
of between one and ten. Ten, obviously, is the best, and one is the worst. Broadly, if you have Quality Scores of
seven or above, they’re good.
Bid options
There are two options to pay for clicks on Google:
Automated bidding
Manual CPC
Automated bidding uses AI to drive as much value as possible from the campaign daily budget to help achieve
your goals. In most cases, automated bidding is a more efficient bid type than manual CPC in terms of time
investment and ongoing optimization. This is the default bid type when setting up a Google Ads campaign.
Bid factors
Here are some of the factors that affect how much you pay for a click:
The CPC and Quality Score of competitors also bidding on the keyword
Your own Quality Score for that keyword vs. your competitors’ Quality Score
Estimated CTR (as determined by Google from your search history and other factors)
Landing page relevance to search term and ad (again, as determined by Google)
Landing page considerations
We just saw that your landing page relevance can affect how much you pay for a click. So what are the key
considerations for a good landing page?
Google Ads calculates the relevance of your landing page by using several key indicators, such as:
Relevance to keyword and ads

Language
Device optimization
Speed
In addition, Google looks at the CTAs and conversion actions on the landing page. In other words, are visitors
able to complete tasks with ease on your landing page?
All these factors determine whether Google Ads will look favorably on your landing page in terms of quality
score.
Reducing CPC (and increasing Quality Score)
Obviously, when managing your campaign’s daily budgets, you’re going to want to reduce your campaign
costs. In the context of paid search, display, and video, this involves trying to reduce your cost per click (CPC).
How can you do this?
Remember, your daily budget is basically the sum of your clicks and their CPC. So, by reducing your CPC, you
can reduce your overall daily budget.

The best way to reduce your CPC is by increasing your Quality Score. You can achieve this by doing the
following:
Write better ads.

Improve your landing page.
Add negative keywords to increase relevance.
Test bid strategies.
Apply or auto-apply relevant optimizations from the Recommendations section.
Let’s look at this in a bit more detail.
Write better ads
The way to improve on Quality Score is, obviously, to write better ads. Give a better ad experience. Give a
better answer to the question that the person is asking the search engine. If you have high Quality Score ads,
you could essentially be paying less for a click than a competitor with a lower Quality Score. So that gives you a
competitive advantage, because you can generate more clicks, for less.
Similar best practices apply for display and video ads. Test different creative formats and messaging, and use
the generative AI functions that are being made available to improve the performance of your ads.
Improve your landing page
Improve your landing page, if that’s an issue that Google Ads is flagging with you. If your landing page doesn’t
deliver on the promise of your search ad, then you’re letting people down. You’re saying one thing when they
click and showing them a different experience when they land.
Always try to align the keywords to the ad and the landing page. Or, in display and video campaigns, it’s
important to align the audience to the ad and then to the landing page. When these three elements align in
search and display, you’ll get better results!
Add negative keywords
Add more negative keywords to cut out irrelevant searches that just muddy the water and make your ads less
relevant to what people are looking for. The more negative keywords you add, the more precise your ad
experience and your search experience will be.
Negative keywords can also be added to display and video campaigns to ensure your ads don’t show up beside
specific content themes. And just like paid search, adding negative keywords to campaigns can significantly
improve performance.
Test bid strategies
Also, test bid strategies and thresholds against your objectives. Is it automated bid strategies like optimizing
for conversions? Is it target ROAS? What exactly do you want to achieve and is there an automated bid
strategy that can work for you? Then from time to time, you might try manual bidding to see if performance
improves and to jolt the system if your automated bid strategies are starting to falter.
Testing, testing, and more testing is the way to proceed when it comes to any kind of Quality Score
optimization. To give you an idea of where you should be bidding and what different bid levels and bid
thresholds can do for your keywords, there is an automated tool available in Google called the Bid Simulator

which will show you what increased target CPAs or target ROAS might achieve based on recent results. When
you click on the daily budget for a campaign, it will often show you simulations for increased spend levels and
you might also see it as a recommendation by Google in the Recommendations section.
SEARCH, DISPLAY, AND VIDEO CAMPAIGN OPTIMIZATION
How to optimize your campaign
You can use several strategies to optimize your search, display, and video campaigns to ensure you reach your
goals:
One way is to rotate your creative and test new messaging.

Another strategy is to test new keywords, add new display targeting options, test bid strategies, and
update negative keywords regularly to improve performance.
And a third strategy is to adjust your budgets in line with performance. Increase daily spend on best-
performing campaigns, and obviously reduce spend on campaigns that don’t give you the results you
want.
If you structure your campaigns for performance by doing things like grouping all related high-performing
keywords into top keyword ad groups in a top keyword campaign, you can simply dial up the spend on your
best performing keywords as you need. Likewise you can group all your top-performing targeting types into
top performance display campaigns and increase the campaign spend for your best placements.
However, if you mix top-performing keywords or display audience targets in the same campaign as low-
performance keywords or audiences, then your best and worst keywords and display targeting options share
the same daily campaign spend.
This is why it’s always worth having a few top-performance campaigns – in other words, at least one top-
performance campaign for each of your different product types. Doing this will give you the flexibility to easily
focus your spend on the most important keywords and display or video audience targets, so you get more out
of your overall budget.
PAID SEARCH AND ADVANCED MEASUREMENT
Using Google Analytics
In order to take a deeper dive into the actions, engagements, pages, and conversions that people take after
they clickthrough from your PPC ad onto your website, you can link Google Analytics 4 to Google Ads.
Here are the steps for linking Google Ads and Google Analytics:
1. Sign into both Google Ads and Analytics.

2. Navigate to the Admin area in Google Analytics.
3. Choose Google Ads linking and select the accounts or manager account to link.
Benefits
Why link Google Ads and Google Analytics?

You’ll be better able to do the following:
Enhance your reporting with detailed website engagement.

See how paid search channels perform against other channels.
Measure Return On Ad Spend (or ROAS) for ecommerce clients. And…
Get a deeper understanding of what searchers do after they clickthrough from your ad.
Accessing Google Analytics
Here’s how you can access Google Ads data in Google Analytics:
1. Use the shortcut to Google Analytics in the Tools menu in Google Ads to quickly access your Google
Analytics 4 data (once linked). This tab allows for fast access to the linked Google Analytics account so
you can begin to analyze campaign performance in terms of website engagements, conversions,
events, and ecommerce activity.
2. To see your Google Ads cost, click, and impression data, navigate to the Acquisition Overview of GA4
and choose the Google Ads from the report options.
Note: You can’t change your campaigns in Google Analytics. It’s only a reporting tool. However, you can get
more insights from Google Analytics to give you the data to make better decisions around what to optimize
across your different campaigns.

NOTES


Cdmp-10 m5 Paid Search and Display Study Notes

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Cdmp-10 m5 Paid Search and Display Study Notes

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

PAID SEARCH AND DISPLAY

SEO (SEARCH ENGINE

Paid Search and Display Advertising Copyright © 2023 digitalmarketinginstitute.com 1

PAID SEARCH ...................................................................................................................................................... 6

What is paid search? ...................................................................................................................................... 6

Why use paid search? .................................................................................................................................... 6

How consumers use search engines .............................................................................................................. 7

How paid search has evolved......................................................................................................................... 7

PPC CAMPAIGN ELEMENTS ................................................................................................................................ 8

Elements of a search engine campaign .......................................................................................................... 8

Aligning the campaign to the searcher .......................................................................................................... 9

Keyword lists .................................................................................................................................................. 9

Driving quality traffic ................................................................................................................................... 10

Good ad copy ............................................................................................................................................... 10

Landing pages .............................................................................................................................................. 10

Qualities of good landing pages ................................................................................................................... 10

GOOGLE ADS .................................................................................................................................................... 11

What is Google Ads? .................................................................................................................................... 11

Google Ads accounts .................................................................................................................................... 11

THE ROLE OF KEYWORDS IN GOOGLE ADS....................................................................................................... 11

Keyword match types .................................................................................................................................. 12

Keyword lists and ad groups in Google Ads ................................................................................................. 13

PPC KEYWORD RESEARCH ................................................................................................................................ 14

What is keyword research? ......................................................................................................................... 14

Google Keyword Planner ............................................................................................................................. 15

Paid Search and Display Advertising Copyright © 2023 digitalmarketinginstitute.com 2

CREATING A PPC CAMPAIGN ............................................................................................................................ 16

Elements of a paid search campaign ........................................................................................................... 16

PPC best practices ........................................................................................................................................ 16

LESSON 2: DEMAND GENERATION WITH DISPLAY AND VIDEO ADVERTISING ........................ 19

DISPLAY AND VIDEO ADVERTISING .................................................................................................................. 20

The role of video and display advertising .................................................................................................... 20

Display and video advertising vs paid search marketing ............................................................................. 20

GDN, AI, AND PERFORMANCE MAX ................................................................................................................. 21

What is the Google Display Network? ......................................................................................................... 21

GDN campaign types .................................................................................................................................... 21

Campaign goals ............................................................................................................................................ 22

DISPLAY AND VIDEO AD FORMATS .................................................................................................................. 22

Responsive display ads ................................................................................................................................ 22

YouTube ad formats ..................................................................................................................................... 22

TARGETING FOR DEMAND GENERATION ......................................................................................................... 23

What is targeting? ........................................................................................................................................ 23

Types of targeting ........................................................................................................................................ 23

Audience targeting ....................................................................................................................................... 23

Content targeting ......................................................................................................................................... 24

REMARKETING FOR DISPLAY AND VIDEO CAMPAIGNS .................................................................................... 25

What is Google Ads Editor? ......................................................................................................................... 25

LESSON 3: MEASURING AND OPTIMIZING GOOGLE ADS CAMPAIGNS ................................... 28

Paid Search and Display Advertising Copyright © 2023 digitalmarketinginstitute.com 3

What is conversion tracking? ....................................................................................................................... 30

PAID SEARCH METRICS AND REPORTS ............................................................................................................. 31

Key campaign metrics .................................................................................................................................. 31

PPC BUDGET MANAGEMENT ........................................................................................................................... 32

Managing your advertising budget .............................................................................................................. 32

BIDDING IN GOOGLE ADS ................................................................................................................................. 33

What is the bid auction? .............................................................................................................................. 33

Quality Score ................................................................................................................................................ 33

SEARCH, DISPLAY, AND VIDEO CAMPAIGN OPTIMIZATION ............................................................................. 36

How to optimize your campaign .................................................................................................................. 36

PAID SEARCH AND ADVANCED MEASUREMENT .............................................................................................. 36

Using Google Analytics................................................................................................................................. 36

Paid Search and Display Advertising Copyright © 2023 digitalmarketinginstitute.com 4

Paid Search and Display Advertising Copyright © 2023 digitalmarketinginstitute.com 5

What is paid search?