In 2018, Google AdWords became “Google Ads.” But it’s still an online advertising platform developed by Google.
If you’ve ever used the backend of Facebook ads, a platform that looks and feels much more accessible to “beginner” online advertisers, the basic functionality and premise of Google Ads will be very familiar to you.
Advertisers run ad campaigns on behalf of businesses (or businesses run these ads themselves, using in-house experts) using the Google Ads platform.
It’s pay-for-play on Google ads, so your dollars go towards displaying brief advertisements, service offerings, product listings, video content, and generating mobile application installs within the Google ad network to web users.
Since Google is also the number one search engine in the world, right now, you can pretty much rely on the fact that this “network” of web users is almost everyone.
The platform is very powerful because it’s quite granular. If you know what you’re doing, you can get some stellar results for your campaigns. The whole idea behind Google Ads is to get super-targeted with your keywords so that you can spend less money for more qualified leads.
Your cost-per-click and click-through rates matter. Every time a user sees your ad and clicks-through (takes action), they’re responding to the offer you’ve advertised — and, so, you’re paying for it.
That’s regardless of whether or not they finally “convert” and become a customer. You’re also paying for the number of “impressions” that your ads get — which means the number of views, based on the keywords your campaign is focusing on.
You can set the basics of the campaign, such as ad spend per day and how much time the campaign runs for. Now, the Google Ads platform also includes some of its own behind-the-scenes tinkering.
If one ad is doing better than another, it will privilege the better-performing ad for your ad spend. It also adjusts your campaign’s keywords as the ad runs along, so, in your Search Term reports you may see keywords creep in that weren’t what you intended to spend money on.