The Best New Google Ad Features for 2019

Improve your PPC campaigns with a little help from the new Google Ad features!

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The joy of digital marketing is that it is ever-changing. There is always a new technology, strategy or tool to test and play with. The good news is Google has given our Google Ads experts a few new toys to have fun with!

Now that the dust has settled from Google Marketing Live 2019 back in May, we review some of the most important (and useful!) Google ad updates.

google-gallery-adsAs an innovative Google ads agency, we are very thrilled about the launch of Gallery ads. Gallery ads are a carousel of large images, which users can swipe through. A call to action is added at the end of the image gallery.

Each gallery ad can contain 4-8 images, with a 70 character unique description and up to 3 headlines to test. But before you get too excited, bear in mind gallery ads can only show in the top-ranking position and on mobile devices.

It is also handy to know that gallery ads can be used in addition to text-based Search ad campaigns – you don’t need to create a new campaign to start testing them!

So why is this big news? Well, we all know that a ‘picture paints a thousand words’, and humans can process visual data much faster than reading words. This is why images are better for driving engagement than pure text-only ads.

Although this ad type may not result in a lot of direct conversions, it is a highly effective way to showcase company and product highlights through visuals. Expect to see a lot of restaurants, holiday and clothing sites using gallery ads in future.

 

Google Discovery ads

We think Google may have been inspired by Facebook when they designed their new Discovery ads. Discovery ads allow advertisers to display either a single image or a carousel of multiple images in an advert. This helps communicate a visual story about a brand, service or product. Like gallery ads, users can swipe to see a range of images, which makes the experience a bit more fun and interactive.

Discovery ads are made up of your landing page URL, a minimum of at least 1 image, your logo and up to five headlines and descriptions.

Interestingly, there is no bidding function for discovery ads. These campaigns are solely driven by Google’s machine learning data. Whether you are ready to trust and take advantage of the Google algorithm (gulp), this is certainly an opportune campaign method to test.

So how are discovery ads any different from display ads? Well, discovery ads are designed to show on feeds, rather than on search results. They are a prime way to feature on Google Discovery (which replaced Google feed last year). But wait, there’s more! Google discovery ads can also be shown on your YouTube feed, and Gmail’s social and promotional spaces:

google-discovery-ads

So, this strategy may be a little different to your Search ad campaigns. Rather than focusing on search intent, the focus of a discovery campaign is to promote your ads to a target audience with a specific in-market intention or interest.

 

New smart bidding tools

Smart bidding is still in its infancy, and a lot of PPC agencies are still sceptical of its effectiveness. However, Google have announced three new smart bidding strategies for us to play with and test:

Campaign-level conversion goals

Advertisers can now set relevant goals at campaign level. This gives us more flexibility to set one campaign conversion for brand awareness and another for store visits, resulting in a more complete PPC strategy.

google-conversion-action-sets

Conversion action sets

Conversion action sets lets you build a group of conversion actions which you want to optimise for and add to specific campaigns. So, say if I want to optimise my campaign for a specific set of conversions, I can build my set and apply the same set to other campaigns, quickly and easily.

Seasonality adjustments

This one is a doozy. If your company has a seasonal sale or a special event, Google ads can optimise your campaign to increase conversions during that time period.

Lead Form Ad Extensions

upperdog-google-lead-extensionAgain, possibly inspired by Facebook’s lead gen ads, you can add simple lead forms to your ads via lead extensions.

This method cuts out the middleman and allows potential customers to quickly and easily provide their details for a quote or call back.

Advertisers can personalise the form with a title, description and their own imagery. The only details you can request are the user’s name, email address, phone number and postcode, but this is still a useful tool for quick contact.

Looking for a local web design company or PPC agency? Speak to our digital marketing enthusiasts today at Upperdog, our digital agency in Bournemouth. Call us on 01202 798 820 or email hello@upperdog.co.uk