Google Ads campaign – how much does it cost and is it worth it?

Google Ads is one of the most popular advertising tools that operate on a real-time auction system. This means that payment for our campaign will take place at the moment the ad is displayed. This is one of the fastest ways to purchase online advertising. From this article you will learn what Google Ads is, its advantages and disadvantages, how much it costs and how to set up a campaign yourself.

What is Google Ads?

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Google Ads is a tool from Google, but it is not exclusively related to search ads (although the name may suggest otherwise). Thanks to the multitude of ad networks available, we can display on bothpartner sites (e.g., creating a banner campaign in the ad network) and on Youtube (including banners, product ads and graphics).

On the search engine itself, on the other hand, we can display not only with text ads, the most popular of all available formats, butalso with product ads, which feature graphics with merchandise available in our store. The whole thing, in the vast majority of cases, is created on the basis of a product file, which can be generated from the CMS system or prepared manually.

Google Ads allows you to quickly reach both new and existing customers, and the number of new companies joining to use the tool continues to grow.

The advantages of Google Ads

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Google Ads, in sheer usage, has both a lot of advantages and disadvantages. The pros (fortunately) are mostly related to the campaign itself and the system’s capabilities. By this I mean, for example:

1. The ability to link Google Ads with Google Analytics thanks to automatic tagging. If you care about analyzing the results from the perspective of the entire store, then with just one click, data from Google Ads campaigns will appear in the tool to draw broader conclusions.

2. Presence of multiple ad formats. For the classic banner ad itself, i.e. an ad on the Google Display Network, we have a static format (i.e. a regular banner), a flexible format (i.e. a banner created based on the graphics and logos we upload), we can display with outstream video advertising (a mid-text ad on the phone), video advertising, animation… There is a lot of it, and this is certainly a huge advantage.

3. Billing method. While many advertisers in Poland offer a fixed fee for displaying an ad (for example, a fixed fee per day of display), Google offers a much more fragmented fee system. The most popular is CPC billing, whereby we make a payment per click on an ad. This is convenient in that we only make payment for the user who has been interested in our ad. We can still bill in other ways, but cost per click is by far the most popular.

Read also: All you need to know about PPC (pay per click).

4. Measurability of results. Real-time auction systems are characterized by visibility into key advertising metrics such as views, clicks, CTR or conversions.

5. Conversions. This is another plus of Google Ads: the ability to measure end results, such as sales or in terms of lead acquisition. We are able to upload a conversion code that will measure, for example, the number of products sold. It doesn’t have to be sales or lead data – the conversion code can be placed anywhere on the page that is ultimately intended to indicate goal achievement.

6. Additional tools. With additional tools, such as a keyword planner, we are able to plan a campaign or get initial estimates of results. Of course, these are just estimates, the success of the campaign itself depends on many factors. For example, on the landing page and the quality of the ad itself. However, the planner will be a good guide before planning to spread the budget across all the advertising channels we are interested in.

7. General Availability. Systems such as DoubleClick, for example, are granted only to selected advertisers. Not only does not everyone have access to them, but you have to pay an additional fee for such a tool based on usage alone. With Google Ads, it’s different. Any user who would like to take advantage can do so.

Disadvantages of Google Ads

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The downsides of Google Ads very often lie in technical things. I mean here, for example:

1. The possibility of exceeding the daily budget, even twice. Admittedly, Google compensates for this on a monthly basis, but it continues to be a hassle when running an account. If we used to have a campaign launched and then stopped it, if we launch it again in the middle of the month, we have to reckon with the fact that our expenses may be even twice as much as we assumed. I’ve experienced such situations myself, and unfortunately it’s hard to get around it in such a way as to make sure that we don’t limit the work of the algorithms.

2. The complexity of the tool. It takes no small amount of time to learn how the system works, if we want to be able to set up the campaign sensibly and bring it to the results we want to be satisfied with – especially sales-wise.

3. Invoices are issued after the fifth day of the month. If you have an accountant who requires all invoices to be sent at the very beginning of the month, Google Ads may do you a bit of an uphill battle: you won’t be able to generate your document until after the sixth day of the month at the earliest.

Google Ads or SEO?

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This is a question you often hear from SEO agencies, if said agencies also run paid campaigns. To answer this question, you need to consider what your requirements are for on-page results. Although Google Ads and SEO very often create a synergistic effect between them, the budget sometimes does not allow you to take advantage of both activities.

If you want your site to be visible at the top of search results as soon as possible, you should use Google Ads. Positioning will make it possible for your site to appear in TOP3 after a long time, and Google’s paid campaign, when properly configured, will bring valuable traffic to your site practically immediately.

Google Ads campaigns, on the other hand, are billed mainly on a per-click basis. This means that no matter how long you run the campaign, you will have to feed Google’s system with money from your own pocket all the time. On the other hand, SEO, when it leads your site to increased traffic, will generate free entries from the search engine. So if you plan to stay in the search engine for a long time, it’s very possible that SEO will ultimately be more profitable for you.

In case you have a specific promotion on your site, or for example, you have created a landing page and you know that there is no point in positioning a particular site, then the best solution will be to use Google Ads.

How much does a Google Ads campaign cost?

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This question has no single answer. As I mentioned earlier, the advertising systemGoogle Ads has a number of billing models and all of them are unit – per display, per click and the like. The cost of a campaign will therefore be as high as the rates per click or per thousand ad impressions.

The rate for a campaign depends on the keyword and on the audience list – in general, on the chosen target. The size of the rate is determined not only by the competition (after all, it is an auction system), but also by the quality of the ad configuration. Using a text campaign as an example: Google Ads takes into account the keyword quality score, the ad ranking and the rate. The keyword quality score consists of:

• advertising relevance – with this indicator the Google Ads system determines the fit of the ad to the recipient;

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• predicted CTR – a factor resulting from the algorithm’s predictions in connection with the potential amount of click-through rates;

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• quality of the landing page;

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There are industries and keywords for which the rates are as high as tens/hundreds of zlotys each, and there are also phrases that can cost a few pennies. Everything depends on the above factors.

Setting up a campaign on your own

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In order to set up a campaign on our own, at first we should decide what ad format can potentially bring us the best results. Very often such a format is text campaign and product campaign, so I will focus on the text campaign because it is more universal (not only for e-commerce).

First of all, we need to determine how much budget we should allocate to the campaign. For this purpose, a keyword planner comes to our aid, which will initially show what the estimated cost per click is for given keyword phrases. Once the budget has been set and the phrases selected, you need to configure the basic elements at the campaign level – location, languages, audience, and the appropriate rate strategy.

You can also check the estimated average amount per click for Google Ads in Senuto’s Keyword Database:

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Flexible and extended ads

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Once we’ve done the above and loaded the previously selected keywords into the campaign, we can move on to configuring the ad itself. The two most recommended types of ads are the most common: flexible text ads and extended text ads.

Flexible ads are formats that use multiple headlines and ad content to rotate them according to their effectiveness.

Expanded ads text ads also include descriptions and headlines, but are displayed consistently in the same layout. It is now recommended that you use one flexible ad and two extended ads.

In order to show the user more information about our site and thus improve the ranking of our ad, we still need to add extended ads. We can use subpage link extensions, explanation extensions, phone, location and even more. The more extensions used, the higher the probability of a high ad ranking. Such extensions are displayed together with the content of the basic ad.

Training

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If you are going to start your adventure with Google Ads, then sprinkle in the right materials to assimilate the basic knowledge of this tool. With help in this regard comes Skillshop, a platform from Google that gives you the opportunity not only to access knowledge, but additionally to do certifications in ad network advertising, ad performance measurement, product advertising, search network, video advertising and applications.

In many cases, however, there is no time to read a lot of material. That’s when SEO agencies and Google Ads specialists come to the rescue and can provide such training.

Summary

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The Google Ads system is a tool that allows us to advertise on Google on partner sites and on Youtube. Whether activities within this tool will be profitable depends on many factors – your industry, the quality of your website, your offerings and the like. What is certain, however, is that the Google Ads advertising network is one of those with the lowest entry threshold in terms of budget. It is also a system that, along with Facebook Ads, is one of the most desirable for media planning.