Google Streamlines Display Campaigns 

Another day, another marketing automation rollout, with Google’s latest updates for Display ads.

Google’s latest update sees it looking to simplify the campaign set-up process for the time-poor and/or novices while also trying to dazzle more advanced users with a more significant input for machine learning.

Google Ads will streamline Display campaigns by consolidating Standard display and Smart display options.

Advertisers will still be able to use manual or automated solutions, but they will now live in the same place. When advertisers create a campaign, they will be presented with the option to pick an automatic or customised experience.

Google Ads Help

“Standard Display campaigns and Smart Display campaigns are now available as one campaign type. You no longer have to manually choose between either campaign type when building a Display campaign.”

Google is also introducing optimised targeting. Optimised targeting can be used as a stand-alone option, or it can be used to add audience signals to influence optimised targeting.

Google Ads’ campaign construction experience will now provide users step-by-step guidance for each part of the campaign and feature a more intuitive navigation experience.

Other changes are:

• Support for data-driven attribution. It will give credit for conversions based on how people engage with ads and become customers and uses data that your account generates to see which campaigns, keywords or ads have the greatest impact.
• Pay for conversions. You can now use pay for conversions to get billed for conversions that receive your target CPA, rather than just clicks.
• More control. Users can add targeting signals and content exclusions to your campaign and use Audience Insights to see what type of customers are converting.

Doing more with more

The features will help advertisers expand their reach, much as Facebook has looked to do recently following Apple’s ad privacy crackdown.

Optimised targeting can expand your targeting in any area. For example, you could be targeting customers in one location, but the system could realise that people in other physical places are likely to be converted by your advertising. Optimised targeting would deliver adverts to those people, even when they’re outside your manual settings.

Targeted expansion will expand upon audiences in a campaign but will respect the boundaries of targeting settings.

More control and different ways to pay will always help advertisers stay happy, but the most significant change comes with optimised targeting.

The rise of automation

Google Ads started to embrace automation in 2017 with Smart Display and tweaked it in 2018 when responsive display ads were introduced.

Automation is designed to help advertisers expand reach while keeping costs down.

Bonnie Pericolosi, Director of Product Management, Google Display Ads

“We introduced Smart Display campaigns four years ago to create a simple way to reach your audience across millions of sites and apps. Smart Display campaigns have helped make it easier to reach your goals — using automation to find new and existing customers, tailor your creative and set optimal bids.”

Smart Display campaigns are automated to optimise targeting, bidding and ads. These ads can automatically find and target new customers and set bids for you.

Advertisers who use Smart Display campaigns see an average of 20% more conversions with the same CPA, says Google, compared with other display campaigns.

Google Ads Help

“Smart Display campaigns combine your assets—headlines, images, and more—to create responsive display ads, which have replaced responsive ads as the default ad type for the Display Network.”

They can even be used as native ads and will optimise themselves based on what gains you conversions.

Optimised targeting is the future

Advertisers will find that optimised targeting will automatically be turned on for all campaigns. It finds audiences that meet your goals – while marketers can add keywords or segments to further enhance targeting.

Google Ads Help

“Optimised targeting looks beyond any manually-selected signals (for example, audience segments or contextual segments) to acquire customers you may have missed to improve campaign performance.”

Optimised targeting is available for:

• Discovery campaigns.
• Display campaigns.
• Video campaigns that have sales, leads or website traffic goals.