[See original story on changes to dynamic search ads on our blog]
If you are actively using Google AdWords, then you know that Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) are the easiest way to reach customers that precisely match your offer on Google. The best thing about DSA is that they use your website to help target your ads and fill in the keyword-based gaps in your campaigns. Even the best managed AdWords accounts that use many keywords can experience some setbacks without DSA, including missing out on relevant searches, experiencing delays in writing ads for new products, or being out of sync with what’s actually available on the destination website.
The benefits of using DSA are great. They help you save time and reach new markets faster and the ads are frequently and automatically updated as soon as you make changes to your webpages. They also show relevant results with dynamic headlines, giving you greater control over your campaign, and most importantly, helping you generate additional traffic and sales compared to what you get from keyword-targeted campaigns.
Now, Google is making an update to DSA by introducing three significant changes aimed at giving advertisers a better handle on the quality of the ad creativity and targeting. Let’s see what those changes actually are.
Page Feed — More Control Over What You Advertise
Searchers are more likely to click on an ad and buy a product or service when it fits their needs or solves a problem. That is why having more control over what you advertise, and making sure your ads are very relevant to prospects is key.
In order to provide advertisers with an additional layer of control, Google introduced Page Feeds to DSA campaigns. That allows you to create a feed — a spreadsheet of the products or services you want to promote, and add it to a new or an existing dynamic search campaign. When you use a Page Feed to specify which URLs to use in your DSA, it helps Google determine when and to whom to show your ads, and where to direct people on your website.
Additionally, Google recommends adding custom labels to your selected URLs to categorize and organize the specific targets in groups. When you use labels such as “Special Promotion” or “Out of Stock” in your Page Feed, you can easily activate ads within that promotion at the same time, or pause them to stop unwanted paid traffic.
This is a very helpful feature that saves time and helps ecommerce advertisers save money by delivering only relevant content to their prospects.
Expanded Ads — Longer Descriptions for Deeper Messaging
Having more screen real-estate is always good when it comes to display advertising. You want your ads to be bigger and more noticeable, and also explain your offer better and in more detail. The transition to Extended Text Ads on Search and Display campaigns occurred in January, and these new, larger ads are about to make their way to DSA as well.
Longer headlines and descriptions allow advertisers to show more information about their business and their offering. The higher character count of the extended description field gives you additional space and lets you be more specific with the ad, while the other features remain dynamic. This enhancement is expected to roll out over this month (May 2017) and we are excited to welcome it.
Quality Enhancements — Be More Relevant
Ad relevancy and quality may begin with specifying which web pages and which products or services you want to promote, but it continues with having your ads show only when they are most relevant to the what the searchers are looking for.
Let’s say someone looks for a digital marketing agency in L.A. and instead of seeing the ad for Visible Factors, they are shown an ad about a digital marketing agency in Charlotte. Not very relevant, right? With the latest updates, Google is promising advertisers a quality enhancement focused on location-based targeting.
Improved ad-targeting is very important and beneficial, especially for local businesses that want to reach a certain audience. When you know that your ad will be displayed to prospects which are in the vicinity of your business, you are willing to pay more, because you will get exposure and possibly more clicks and an increase in profit.
These three changes made to Dynamic Search Ads are allowing more control over your targeting and more specific descriptions of the products and services you are selling. This means your ads are about to have a higher conversion rate at lower CPA (Cost Per Action).
So if you were hesitant about including DSA in your campaigns and weren’t sure if they’ll get you the wanted results, we hope these improvements change your mind and make you give DSA a chance. Contact us to help you setup up Dynamic Search Ads campaigns for. We promise you’ll be in for an awesome and very fruitful ride.
