What are Google Ads (Beginners Guide)
As long as you are looking for what are Google ads or Google Ads, this means that you want to exploit the potential of the largest digital advertising network in the world to market something and make a profit through it in one way.
The giant Google Ads platform is one of the most important platforms that many marketers and owners of companies and brands rely on, whether large or emerging.
If you are one of those and want to start your journey in the fun world of Google ads, then you are in the right place, because in this guide you will learn everything you need.
In this guide you will find:
- Why do most marketers in the world rely on the Google platform specifically to promote their products and services.
- The types and locations of advertisements provided by the giant Google Network.
- How does Google Ads work through the Google Ads platform.
- How ads are ranked in search results.
- How the photos and videos that appear on the different sites that cooperate with Google are selected.
- How is the cost of a single ad calculated?
- The most important resources you need to become a professional Google Ads platform.
All this you will find presented to you in a simple and clear way with the use of many examples and illustrations, this is our habit on the winners site.
Why do you want to rely on Google ads
In order to get new customers for your business, or to promote your different products, you can use a lot of free platforms and ways to promote, such as:
- Post articles on your site and get traffic from different search engines.
- Pay attention to SEO in your online store and get customers from search engines.
- Post content on various social networking sites (Facebook - Instagram - Telegram - Linkedin) and build your own audience.
So why would you like to spend money on ads, especially Google ads that giant network, or rather why are there so many companies and marketers who pay millions to advertise on Google?
Perhaps you have an idea about the answer to this question, and perhaps these are the reasons that prompted you in the beginning to search for what is Google Ads or what is Google Adwords.
However, there are several reasons I want you to keep in mind to begin your journey into using the gigantic capabilities of Google Ads, and you are fully aware of all the factors on which your success depends.
1- Google enables you to promote in many ways
If you think that Google enables you to make ads on the search engine results page only, you do not see the whole picture, there are many places that Google provides for you to place your ads.
For example, you will find:
- Ads in the form of promotional emails that you can display to everyone who has a Gmail account.
- Advertisements in the form of images or short videos on various websites.
- Ads on YouTube.
- Ads on the famous Google search engine.
- Ads on Android apps.
Do not worry, I will show you later all the main types of Google ads and what distinguishes each type.
2- Google is the most reliable site in the world
Advertising is to put your product or service in front of the right person at the right time, and Google is the most used site in the world according to many statistics.
There are more than 3.5 billion searches made on Google every day, this is in addition to YouTube and the rest of Google platforms and products that you can use for promotion.
This means that whatever service or product you want to promote, Google will enable you to reach those interested in it anywhere in the world.
3- Google offers you huge possibilities to implement successful advertising campaigns
There are many possibilities that most advertising platforms in the world do not provide, and that Google provides to advertisers, for example, Google enables you to:
- Target specific keywords to place your ads on.
- Placing your ads in front of only a specific group of people according to (age - gender - interests - geographic location).
- You can select specific sites or videos to place your ads on.
- You can retarget your visitors to save on advertising expenses.
- Google provides you with the best tracking and analysis tools to test the results of your ad campaigns.
- Google relies on various artificial intelligence techniques to collect data and provide it to advertisers.
- Google is keen to provide a strong user experience.
For this, according to Google itself, for every dollar spent on Google Ads, the advertiser gets $8 in return, which is a very large number for every marketer or business owner.
This is what makes you trust Google Ads and that it will bring you positive results once you know how to use it properly.
4- Free promotion takes a lot of time
Perhaps the strongest reason for relying on ads in general is that free promotion through social media, creating a blog or even creating a YouTube channel takes a lot of time and maybe even some money.
You need:
- Find new ideas for writing your articles or making videos.
- Use programs to design photos and videos professionally.
- Building a relationship with the audience and providing good content.
And all this takes a lot of time and effort, and ads often shorten the way for you, and this is the strongest reason to use ads in general.
Of course, there is a benefit to you from using one of the free methods such as the one below:
- Content Marketing.
- Marketing through social media
- Provide good customer service
- Search Engine Optimization
- Marketing through YouTube videos.
All of the above methods produce positive results, which is essential for many brands, companies and small business owners, but imagine if you combine the power of these methods with the capabilities that the Google Ads platform offers you?
Then you will be able to use your time and budget in a very efficient way, and you will be able to rely on retargeting and testing different traffic sources.
After we know the importance and power of the Google Ads platform, let's now learn how it works, how Google chooses and ranks ads and other important things for any advertiser.
Types of Google ads offered by the Google Ads platform
The main types of advertising campaigns (Google Ad Campaign) are what you see in the following image:
The first type is: Search network Ads
This type is intended for text ads that appear to the user in any search engine owned by Google, such as:
- normal google search.
- Search on Google Maps (Google Maps).
- Search on youtube.
The second type: Google Display Network
This type is intended to display your ads on sites and places that are either wholly owned by Google, or have partnered with their owners to place ads in them.
Whether you're reading this guide on a computer or a phone, do you see the ads that pop up on this page now between the lines? These ads are shown to you because the winners site is subscribed to Google Adsense.
There are many sites in the world that allow advertisers to place ads on them, and this is what Google has exploited, as it has built a large platform that regulates the relationship between the advertiser and the publisher, so that each of them guarantees his right.
There are plenty of examples of where you can place your ads such as:
- The sites involved in the Adsense program as I mentioned.
- Email (When you open your Gmail account you don't see advertising emails in your inbox).
- Image ads found on YouTube itself (the ones you find to the right or left of the video when you're using a computer).
The third type: Google Shopping Ads
This type is intended for electronic stores that can put different products and some information about them in front of anyone looking for these products.
For example, look at the following image that appeared to me when I searched for “Sharp refrigerator”, which is one of the popular types of refrigerators:
You will find that the company “Al-Araby Group”, which is the main company that distributes this product in Egypt, has made an advertisement on Google in order to sell this product directly to anyone interested in it.
Fourth type: Video Ads
Video ads are one of the most important and best ads that marketers rely on, as Google owns the giant YouTube, which is the largest search engine in the world for videos.
Marketers and business owners had to use this large audience through targeted video ads.
Fifth type: Universal App
This type is for ads on the Android network that contains millions of apps and used by a lot of people. You can promote your own app, or you can place some ads on specific apps or target a specific audience.
All of these places, whether owned by Google (Gmail - YouTube), or whose owners allow Google to place ads in them, such as sites, applications, and owners of various YouTube channels.
It enables you to get new customers through advertisements in a variety of different ways, and this is one of the most important reasons why marketers and any business owners rely on Google Ads to promote various products and services.
How does Google Ads (formerly Google Adwords) work
The Google Ads platform displays ads to interested people and potential customers, based on two principles: bid and quality. The type of advertising campaign.
In fact, you are not the only person who is advertising in a specific field or about a specific product, and here comes the role of the Google Ads platform in determining what is the ad that deserves to appear in the first results.
Everyone who wants to take advantage of this keyword (or video - or site) creates their own ad (text ad - image - video) and then put it in Google Ads and put their bid amount.
Based on the above, in order for the Google Ads platform to select and rank ads, it depends on two things:
- Bid value for each advertiser (Bid).
- Quality Score for each ad.
Let me explain to you each factor separately, then put in your hands a wonderful infographic to explain more to you how the whole process is done, and also how the cost of each advertisement you make is determined.
How does Google Ads bidding work?
The first factor that the Google Ads platform depends on in determining the ranking of ads is the bid, and a bid is the maximum amount that you can pay in order to get the first ranking for your ad.
For example, suppose you sell a “Sharp refrigerator”, and you want to place an ad on this keyword on Google, and you said that the maximum amount you will pay for each click on your ad is $2, so the amount you will increase by is $2.
And since you are not the only one who sells this product and wants to exploit the Google search engine, there will be other people who bid on the same search word, perhaps one of them bids for 3 dollars and another for 1.5 dollars … and so on.
Based on this, Google will show the ad whose owner pays more first, and then it will display the ads whose owners pay the least, each according to his bid amount.
What is Quality Score and how is it used to calculate Ad Rank
The second factor that is used in the ranking of ads is the Quality Score or quality scale, which is a measure used by Google in evaluating each ad, so that it evaluates each of:
- The relevance of the ad itself to the search word or the place where the ad will be placed, for example, it is difficult to place an ad for a refrigerator on a site that talks about games.
- The relevance of the landing page for the advertisement.
- The date of the advertiser's account and the absence of any complaints or violations in his account.
- The CTR is a measure of user engagement with the ad itself.
The value of the Quality Score is from 0 to 10, if you get a Quality Score of 10, it means that your ad and account are excellent and will likely outperform anyone else in any bid.
Look at the following infographic from Wordstream, the global ad buying platform, that shows how ads are ranked and how they cost:
You also see how Ad Rank is calculated, which equals the product of the quality metric multiplied by your bid value.
And the account that gets the highest value for Ad Rank is the one whose ad is placed in the first result, and almost the same is done for placing ads of the type Display like you see on different website pages and YouTube videos.
But the difference is in the value of the bid itself, which I will explain to you later... The important thing now is that you know how to choose the ads that are placed in front of you.
How to calculate advertising cost
In the previous infographic, it was explained how to calculate the value of the advertisement, which is the value you pay for each click on your ad, or the so-called CPC, as follows:
- After determining the Ad Rank value for each ad and deciding which ad will appear in the first result.
- Ad Rank value is chosen for ad number 2.
- Then divide this number by the value of the quality metric for the first ad.
- Then add $0.01 to the quotient, and this is the cost-per-click for the first ad.
- In the same way, the cost of each ad is calculated by knowing the value of Ad Rank for the next ad, as shown in the infographic.
Thus, the order of advertisements does not directly depend on the value of the bid, as you note in the infographic that the advertisement that won first place made the lowest bid, which is only $2.
Therefore, the most important factor that you have to pay attention to is your Quality Score, the higher the value you get, the less you will pay and also beat the competitors.
This is how ads are arranged and costed in the Google Ads platform, but there is a point I want to make clear to you so that you have a complete picture, which is the difference between CPC and CPM.
What is the difference between CPC and CPM
As I mentioned earlier in the method of calculating the cost of advertising, the cost of display ads is calculated in a somewhat different way, which is the calculation of the CPM.
CPM is an acronym for Cost Per Mile, which is to calculate the cost of your advertising for 1000 impressions, and this is what is used in this type of advertising.
The process of calculating the cost is done in the same way that I explained earlier, but this time it is based on a group of ads, and also the relevance of the ad is determined not based on keywords.
Rather, it depends on the site or video on which the advertisement is placed, then the Ad Rank is calculated for each advertisement and then the rest of the steps I mentioned earlier.
How to get started in Google Ads platform
The Google Ads platform may seem a little complicated, especially if you are a beginner in this field, but Google has made an integrated course that explains everything on this platform, which you can access from here.