What Is Google Adwords? Your Ultimate Guide
Thinking about using paid digital marketing to grow your business?
You’re not the only one. Google earned $149 billion in revenue from businesses like yours advertising on the Google Ads platform in 2020.
All this to say, if you’re not advertising with Google Ads yet, you should be. We’ll be covering everything you need to know about the platform in this article, starting with the obvious — what is Google Adwords?
What Is Google Adwords?
Google Adwords, or Google Ads as it’s now known, is a pay-per-click advertising platform. Businesses use it to reach their audience in many different ways. One of the most appealing things about this type of advertising is that you only pay when a user clicks on your ad.
Google Ads is the most popular PPC advertising platform in the world and for good reason. Google processes more than 40,000 search queries a second, adding up to over 3.5 billion searches a day.
That’s a lot of eyes to potentially land on your ads.
Types of Google Ads
There are many ways to advertise within Google Ads. The main types of ads include:
- Search
- Display
- Video
- App
- Shopping
Search ads are the text ads you see appear at the very top of Google search results pages. These are keyword-based, so you pick the keywords you want to target and when a user enters that query, your ad is triggered.
Display ads are image-based ads that can appear across the Google display network. This is a collection of more than 2 million websites. This type of ad is most popular for remarketing, where you target a user who has already been on your site using cookies.
Video ads appear on YouTube, which Google owns. These can be targeted based on keywords, interests, and many more options.
If you’ve got an app for your business, Google’s got you covered with app ads. These ads can appear within many Google properties including Google Play, YouTube, and more.
Google shopping ads are a little newer. These ads can appear across many Google properties and are keyword-based like search ads. They’re a great option for eCommerce businesses looking for highly targeted, visual ads.
How Does Google Ads Work?
Using Google Ads is simple, but time-consuming!
In theory, all you need to do is set up an account, choose the type of campaign you want, set it up and you’re off. But in practice, if you want well-optimized campaigns that deliver great results, you’ll need to put the time in or hire a Google ads agency.
There are two main metrics advertisers look at to see how well their ad campaigns are performing: CTR and conversions.
What Is CTR in Google Adwords?
CTR stands for click-through rate. This metric measures the number of clicks you get per number of impressions.
It’s a good way to tell how engaging your ads are for users. The higher your click-through rate, the better your ad.
What is Conversion in Google Adwords?
Lots of clicks on your ads are great, but not if those users aren’t then buying your products. This is what’s known as a conversion. Your conversion rate on Google ads shows how many people went on to buy your product or service.
Learn More About Digital Advertising
Now you know the answer to “what is Google Adwords?”, but there’s so much more to learn. Google Ads is a great platform, but it’s one of many options for digital advertising. You can learn about other options like social media advertising on our blog.
