Contextual advertising from Google. Contextual advertising Yandex-Direct and Google-Adwords

One of the most effective modern ways to promote your business on the Internet is the use of contextual advertising. These are specially highlighted ads that the user sees when he enters a search query into the Google, Yandex, and any other search engine. Therefore, the main advantage of such messages is obviously their targeting. A person sees an advertisement on a topic that interests him, which means that he is very likely to visit this target resource. What other advantages does this approach have and how should contextual advertising be set up in Google Adwords so that it brings maximum traffic to the site?

Benefits of contextual advertising

In addition to the exact address message, it has several undeniable advantages:

• it is noticeable and captures the attention of the user from the first seconds after he receives the search results, so it provides 100% coverage of the target audience;
• it is much more economical than print, TV and radio advertising, since you pay only for clicks (transitions) of users, and not for the impression as a whole, which means you minimize the cost of those people who are not interested in your ad;
• such advertising is operational, it is launched during the day and is just as quickly corrected;
• Google has a huge audience, which will certainly increase the number of visits to your site;
• the effectiveness of such placement is easy to track using Google Adwords, the setting of which will be presented below.

As for this particular search engine, on Google you can even choose what you would like to pay for - for views, clicks or conversion (i.e. those users who performed some action other than viewing - put goods in the basket, registered, bought something, etc.).

If these benefits convince you, you can proceed to the first step of creating contextual advertising. In general, all work is conditionally divided into the preparatory stage (selection of keywords and negative keywords, creation of the ad text and visualization for it) and implementation, i.e. placement of Adwords Google ads, setting up, choosing a budget, etc.

Step one - keyword selection

To select keywords - those by which the user can find your ad, you need to use a special scheduler. You can find it in your Google Adwords settings. In order to pick up the "keys", it is not at all necessary to puzzle over how a potential buyer could search for this or that product. It is enough to enter the name and see which variations, according to statistics, are most often of interest to users. For example, the key query “baby goods” is also searched for “baby toys”, “shop for strollers”, “children's world”. The closer the keys are to what you offer, the more likely you are to get your buyer.

Step two - choosing negative keywords

The Google Adwords ad setup will also prompt you to specify negative keywords, i.e. those for which users should not find your ad, so that you do not have to pay for inappropriate clicks. They are located on the same principle as the key ones. For example, if you have a children's goods store in Kemerovo, the query “children's toys” suits you, “buy children's toys Moscow” does not, so one of your negative keywords will be “Moscow”. As a rule, not only geographical criteria are excluded. It can be an assortment that you do not sell (for example, strollers or children's bicycles), combinations of “with delivery”, “bank transfer” and much more.

Step three - choosing a budget

After the words for the ad are determined and it is composed, you can proceed to the important parameters for its placement. To do this, go to Google Adwords, “Campaigns” setting, “Bids and Budget” tab. Here we will determine the maximum cost per click and the expected number of impressions that will add up to your advertising budget. Here we will choose what we want to pay for - for views, clicks or conversion, and indicate the type of advertising campaign, i.e. where it will be displayed - in search or contextual media environment.

Entering an advertisement

It is important that you can change the text and bids for the ad at any time. After all, by regularly analyzing statistics, you will determine for yourself what best brings you results.

A huge benefit to successful ads in terms of CTR is the possible cost reduction from the side mean? The fact is that it is profitable for Google to place those ads that are in great demand. Therefore, the greater the number of clicks in relation to impressions, the higher your bid, which means that the position of the advertising message on the page is higher and its price is lower.

Step Four - Geographic Settings

As mentioned above, you can exclude geographic affiliation using negative keywords. However, of course, it is rather difficult to exclude all cities that are not suitable for you. To do this, it is easier to set the region or city in which you will work in the settings, and in the search you will be a priority for users from this area. Of course, if this is a setting in Google Adwords of a franchise company, then it is better to choose a larger territory, for example, the CIS countries, especially if you have many branches and representative offices.

Other settings

So, what else does Adwords offer has another interesting feature. In the ad, in addition to a link to a resource, contact numbers and an address may be present. You can specify multiple qualifications, such as “discounts” or “free shipping”. If you have a fairly wide assortment with several groups of products, you can specify categories in the ad.

Be sure to set the beginning and end of contextual advertising displays.

Of course, the advertisement itself occupies a separate place, since the success of the advertising campaign as a whole will largely depend on how it presents the resource and how much it interests the user. It can be an interesting headline or a bright, eye-catching image, or perhaps an interesting offer for the buyer.

If you doubt yourself that you can create a quality ad, you may be interested in setting up Google Adwords ads for Justclick. What it is? This is a simple and effective system that helps you create pages for online stores, set up advertising, mailing system, monitor and analyze the effectiveness of campaigns, including those that you will set up in Google Adwords.

Dmitry Dementy

Attracting natural targeted traffic is difficult. And attracting targeted traffic for commercial competitive requests is becoming an impossible task for many small and medium-sized enterprises. Try to handle the internet heavyweights posting comprehensive manuals and consumer reviews every day if your auto repair shop employs five people. And here's the problem: the employees perfectly repair the steering columns and adjust the suspension, but do not have time to write articles about it.

There are several ways out of this situation. One of them is attracting targeted traffic using contextual advertising. In this guide, you will learn how to work with Google AdWords, the advertising service of the world's largest search engine.

How to create a Google AdWords account and set up your first campaign

You can create several types of ads using the Gmail Ads format. With their help, you can show ads to users of the Google mail service.

How to create an app ad

Apps can be advertised on the Display Network using two ad formats: text and image.

To create a text ad, select the appropriate format. Use the drop-down menu to select an app store (App Store or Google Play). Add a package name. To do this, you need to insert the application id into the search form. It can be found in the program URL on the Google Play website.

Select the required package from the list provided by the system.

Add a title and description. Add an image if necessary. Select the type of devices whose users you want to see your ad. Specify a tracking template. Evaluate the appearance of the ad and save the changes.

To create an image ad for an application, select the appropriate format, specify the store, and use the program id to find the package name. Add an image or gif animation of the appropriate format. The file requirements are available via a link in the announcement editor. Add a tracking template, if necessary, exclude impressions on tablets.

Use the application id to find and select the desired application.

Add multiple ad options. They should not be related to each other in meaning. These options may appear at the same time or separately, depending on the format of the ad.

If you have a video ad for the app, download it. Also add custom images if needed. If you do not add images and videos, the system will automatically generate an ad using the content on the app page on Google Play. Evaluate the appearance of ads in different networks. Make changes as needed and continue setting up your campaign.

How to work with video ads and shopping ads

To work with video ads, use the "Video" campaign type. It allows you to show promotional videos on YouTube and other resources. Within the "Video" campaign type, the "Trade" subtype is available. The tool is designed to display products along with video.

To create a video ad, run and set up the appropriate campaign type. Upload a video file to the system or find the desired role on YouTube. Choose an ad format.

• Use the TrueView In-Stream format to show ads at the beginning, middle, or end of a video. You need to pay if the viewer watches the ad for more than 30 seconds.
• The Video Discovery format is suitable for capturing the attention of users who are searching for videos on YouTube or browsing the related videos section. The advertiser pays for clicks to the video.
• Use short splash ads to introduce your audience to your product or brand. You need to pay for 1000 impressions.

Specify the display and target URL. Upload a custom companion banner if needed. The ad will be shown to the audience after verification by Google experts.

The "Shopping" campaign type is designed to advertise products using shopping ads. The tool is suitable for online stores. To create Shopping ads, link your AdWords account in the Merchant Center . After that, launch and set up a Shopping campaign.

Don't try to use all available ad types at all costs. Beginners can solve the main problems of contextual advertising using text and adaptive ads, as well as using universal app advertising. Online retailers should pay attention to shopping ads. If you have the ability to create quality video, use video ads.

How to use Google AdWords remarketing

Remarketing allows you to show ads to users who have already visited your site. The effectiveness of this feature is explained simply: people are more likely to trust sellers they know. In addition, remarketing allows you to show users ads that match their interests.

For example, you can talk about new smartphones to potential customers who have visited the pages of the “Smartphones” category of your online store at least once. And users who read the review of the new tablet model can be shown ads for tablets.

You can manage your remarketing lists in the "Audience Manager - Audience Lists" section. In the "Create Remarketing List" menu, you can select a source and set the conditions for adding users to the list.

Setting up a remarketing list

To set up remarketing, select the Display Network campaign type. For the goals, select the value "Incentivize actions - Purchases on the site."

In your campaign settings, in the Users section, select the Remarketing option.

Select a remarketing audience and continue with campaign settings.

What to do in connection with the entry into force of the GDRP

In this regard, Google announced that the AdWords service is being brought into line with the requirements of the GDPR. In particular, AdWords will have a tool for displaying non-personalized ads to users who have not consented to the display of personalized ads. A similar tool already exists in Google AdSense.

In a post about bringing AdWords into compliance with the GDRP, Google says that advertisers must independently obtain user consent for the collection and use of personal information. This is relevant if the advertiser uses advertising personalization tools, such as remarketing.

Google has not offered tools or mechanisms to AdWords users to obtain consent from advertisers. Therefore, advertisers still have more questions than answers. The AdWords user communities have the following recommendations for those who use remarketing and other ad personalization tools:

• Place a link on the site to the Google privacy and data processing policy.
• Warn users about the use of remarketing and obtain consent.
• Delete personal information upon request.

Google AdWords currently only requires you to enter the contact details of those responsible for GDPR compliance in your account. These contacts are used to inform advertisers about new tools. You can fill in contact information in the account menu "Tools - Settings - Contacts for data protection issues".

What you need to know about landing pages

Landing pages increase the effectiveness of advertising campaigns because they drive conversions. However, you will not be able to land every user who clicks on a link in a contextual ad to a landing page specially created for the advertising campaign. This needs to be explained with an example.

What conclusion can be drawn from these examples? You can use landing pages created specifically for a specific campaign. However, you will also have to use regular sections of the site as landing pages. Therefore, pay attention to the usability of the resource as a whole.

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You can use AMP as a landing page in Google AdWords

In the fall of 2017, Google AdWords, after beta testing, opened up for everyone the opportunity to use accelerated mobile pages as landing pages. The essence of the innovation: as a landing page, the advertiser can specify a link to AMP.

Google caches accelerated pages whenever possible and serves cached versions to visitors. Thanks to this, AMPs load an order of magnitude faster than regular pages. To illustrate the benefits of accelerated pages, Google has published an animation. On the left, AMP is used as a landing page, and on the right, a regular page.

The cost of a click in Yandex Direct has become prohibitive, and the number of applications has fallen? There is nothing surprising, set up Direct, today it’s not so difficult, setting up Google AdWords advertising looks much more difficult. In view of this, with the right approach, advertising in Google Adwords can give very good results with a very modest budget.

That is why, especially for you, we have prepared step-by-step instructions for setting up Google AdWords advertising, relevant for 2019-2020. After reading it you will know:

• how to set up a google account;
• how to run ads in Google AdWords Express;
• how to create and set up an advertising campaign;
• what types of ads are there and which one to choose;
• how to structure a campaign using ad groups;
• how to create quality ads.

So let's get started.

Benefits of Google AdWords

Let's start by talking about the main advantages.

1. Lower cost per click relative to Yandex Direct. As I said at the beginning of the article, high competition and a heated auction make Direct an unaffordable luxury. True, this applies to the most competitive niches to a greater extent, but will soon affect all areas.
2. The choice of sites on which advertisements are displayed.
3. Display in the results of the issuance of Google search partners (mail.ru, begun, etc.).
4. The ability to load the parameters of one campaign for new ones (you won't have to fill in the same fields several times).
5. The impact of ad quality on positions and cost per click. Thanks to a more informative and clickable ad, you can show in 1st place and pay less per click than when shown in 3rd place.
6. Distribution of the budget by time when you can get the most conversions.
7. The ability to set up payment for conversions on the site, and not for a click.

Additional settings

Now go below and open additional settings by clicking on it. Here we will configure ad extensions.

Structured Descriptions

In structured descriptions, you can add many additional extensions (by heading types) to declarations:

• brands;
• quarters;
• courses;
• places;
• models;
• studying programs;
• recommended hotels;
• styles;
• insurance protection;
• types;
• facilities;
• services;

Depending on the advertised business, you can select the desired items and add a short description or title for each (no more than 25 characters). First of all, you should pay attention to the types of headers: brands, places, amenities and services.

Adding Structured Descriptions

Google AdWords gives you the ability to drive targeted traffic through contextual advertising. Among the search engines in Russia, Google ranks second, it accounts for a little more than 40% of search queries (Yandex has about 50), and in terms of the number of sites on which AdSense is installed, Google is ahead of Yandex with its YAN.

Ads in AdWords can appear in searches:

On partner sites:

• Despite the seemingly complicated interface, managing campaigns and ad groups is very simple;
• The ability to flexibly configure many parameters, create experiments and reports in two clicks;
• The quality of ads affects the cost per click, good ads (with a high CTR), Google will show them more often and in better positions;
• The cost per click is lower than in Yandex, since there is less competition among advertisers in AdWords (in many areas, but not everywhere).

Create a campaign

To use Google AdWords, you need a Gmail account.

Google will prompt you to use AdWords Express. This is a lite version that is suitable for those who do not want to set up ad serving on their own. Here you can create an advertising campaign in just a few minutes, for example, Google immediately indicated geographic targeting to me only based on the site url http://mediasimple.ru. I don't recommend using AdWords Express, so switch to traditional AdWords which gives you a lot more options.

To create a campaign, you need to specify its type, as you can see, there are several options.

Search network - your ads will only appear in Google search results, as well as with partners who use the company's search;

• Display Network- banners on sites that host AdSense blocks;
• Display and Search Network- combined method;
• Google Shopping– a good option for selling specific products;
• Video- for those who have a promotional video, it will be shown on YouTube and other sites;
• App Campaign- advertising applications.

The best solution would be to create separate campaigns for the Display Network and the Search Network. Advertising on partner sites has its own specifics, so it is better to create ads separately. For example, there you can enable payment for impressions, and not for clicks.

You will be prompted to choose the type of ads, it’s better to put it right away "All Functions" which allows the use of video and graphics. "Standard" will allow you to create and display only text ads.

You can't specify the type of devices your ads will appear on at this stage, so enter your location. As you can see, you can not only add a specific region, but also exclude it. Below Google offers me to show ads, including on English-language sites, I will not use this offer, I only need the Russian language.

Now you need to choose a betting strategy.

It can be seen that there are six automatic strategies that will set the price themselves, and you can only specify a daily budget. It is also possible to set the cost per click manually, it is better to choose this option, which I will do in my example. The fact is that automatic strategies will not allow you to optimize an advertising campaign, manual settings are almost always much more profitable. I will talk about the betting strategy below.

And last but not least, you can specify additional information for all ads at once:

• Location– display of the address and phone;
• Additional links- the ability to add quick links to individual pages of the site to the ad;
• call- when displayed on mobile devices, the user can immediately call you by clicking on the phone number.

Now we need to create an ad group. The initial settings should not raise any special questions, the screenshot shows the completed fields, also note that a preview of your ad is available on the right.

• The title should contain a key phrase, this increases the effectiveness of the ad;
• The text should contain a call to action;
• If you put a period at the end of the first line of the description, then the text will be displayed on the first line:

• If you have discounts, promotions and other offers that are beneficial for the client, indicate this in the text of the ad.

Now you need to specify keywords, it is clear that Google itself offers you categories of words from which you can choose those that are right for you. Keywords must match your ad. You have two options: add keywords right away, or skip this step and use the Keyword Planner, which I'll talk about below.

You need to know a very important nuance of choosing keywords in Google. By default, all keywords are set to broad match, which means that your ad will be shown for various word forms, which is not always acceptable. You can change this in the settings:

Either write the words in quotation marks or surrounded by . If you write the key phrase in quotation marks, then this will allow phrase matching, for example, "buy a cow" can be shown for the queries "buy and sell a cow", "buy a cow". If you enter [buy a cow], then your ad will be shown only for this request, if the request is entered with an error (buy a cow), then your ad will still be shown.

Below you need to enter your bid per click, then click "Save" and you will be taken to the campaign page.

Google Keyword Planner

A lot depends on the correct selection of keywords, it is better to use the keyword planner right away. There is the possibility of automatic selection of keywords by the site url or by given keys, as well as by goods or services. I entered like this:

The Keyword Planner is great because it shows you the number of searches per month and the recommended bid. I got this result:

It is clearly seen that in queries with the word “Kazan” there are very few impressions, but the bid is much lower. However, I will only add keywords with the word “Kazan”, if I had an ad with the text “Website promotion”, without geo-referencing, then I could choose other options. But the keywords must match the text of the ad, otherwise its effectiveness drops very much, and the click-through conversion will be low.

Add suitable words to the plan, then click "View Plan".

Now you will understand why we did not immediately enter the keywords in the campaign settings. You have the option to move the selected plan to your ad group by clicking "Save to account" and choose "Add to existing ad group".

You have the option to use the Google Keyword Planner and create a new ad group, in the future it's better to do it right away, as it's much more convenient. Well, now we return to the campaign we created and there we see that all the keywords have already been added:

Please note that the AdWords Keyword Planner adds phrases without quotes, they are in broad match, so select all (or necessary) keywords and choose the match type:

Working with ads in Google AdWords

In my example, I created one ad, although, in fact, I need at least two for these keywords. Separately for "development" and separately for "promotion", as these are different services that require different ads and groups of keywords.

This interface has the ability to create any other types of ads, let's try to create a graphic one. Keep in mind that for display ads (which includes image ads), you need to create a separate campaign. Just because the specifics of ads are different, the settings for text ads will not always work for display ads.

If you forgot to select the campaign type in the campaign settings "All Functions", then this menu will not be available to you, you will have to change the settings (this can be done at any time). To create an image ad, you have two options:

• Upload yours;
• Let Google create it for you by providing the site url.

I chose the second option, the result is this:

If one of the options suits you, then you will only need to specify the title and text by clicking "Edit". As you can see, several options are quite acceptable, they can be used. When all options are unsuccessful, it is better to create your own. You will also have the option to change the background and button colors of Google-suggested options.

Selecting an item "Gallery of ad formats" you can create other types of declarations:

There you can upload both your options, and use the proposed templates that can be customized. Of course, this option is not available for video ads and lightboxes, where you will need to upload your content.

The Google AdWords interface seems very complicated to beginners, there are a lot of menu items, a huge number of settings, but in fact, you can master it quite quickly. Above, I reviewed the basic settings that are needed to create ads, the rest allow you to customize them more finely, and also provide opportunities for analytics. Next, I'll talk about other useful features of AdWords.

Experiments

As you know, in contextual advertising, it is necessary to conduct split tests (A / B testing), which will allow you to optimize costs, increase CTR and conversion. Google AdWords gives us a handy built-in tool for this kind of testing. To do this, in the campaign settings, check "Advanced settings"(if they are disabled), then select "Set up experiment".

You need to immediately indicate the beginning and end of the experiment, as well as the ratio of auctions between the experimental and control groups. Right here there are links to the ability to change the parameters of the campaign, ad or keyword list.

Create an experimental ad. To do this, copy an existing one, and then make changes to it. After that, the modified ad must be connected to the experiment, you can do it like this:

After that, you can run the experiment on the settings page. Clicking "Segment" you can select the parameter by which you want to evaluate the results of the experiment. You can compare:

• Various header options;
• The text of the ad, the presence and absence of words like "discount", "promotion", "free";
• Color and design of image ads;
• Dimensions and location;
• Various keyword options.

You can come up with a lot of options, if you have an interesting idea, it’s worth testing it, it’s good that AdWords has this feature built in by default and you don’t need to use third-party services.

Tracking efficiency

Efficiency is evaluated according to different parameters, which depend on your tasks. Most often, these are economic and financial indicators or other targeted actions (registration, etc.), that is, conversion.

Goals and target actions can be tracked using Google Analytics, for this you need to link it to AdWords. Analytics provides very wide opportunities for tracking goals, you can read more in the article “Google Analytics”, where I paid special attention to this moment.

You can track calls manually by maintaining your own records, or you can use the built-in capabilities of Google AdWords. Look for them in the "Tools" menu, "Conversions" section. We will be offered to track calls in one of three ways.

For Russia, only the last option is available, which tracks clicks on a phone number in the mobile version. Of course, the data will be incomplete, but in any case, connecting this function will be useful.

Google also makes it possible to add tags to the site to track specific visitor actions, add code to the application to monitor its downloads or how users interact with it. It is possible to import data from other systems.

Betting strategy

As I wrote above, automatic strategies can of course be used, but setting prices manually usually allows you to achieve better results. AdWords works like an auction, the higher the bids, the more likely it is that your ad will be shown.

If the recommended CPC bid is too high for you, you might want to try changing your keywords and audience settings as this may affect your price. True, you should not forget that in this case the potential audience will become smaller, which is why they create several ad groups, and do not add all the keywords to one and for a wide audience.

That is, you can create one ad to show a conditional audience of a thousand people and pay 100 rubles per click, or you can create ten ads, each show an audience of one hundred people, and pay 50 per click, since there is less competition. The result will be even better, as the ads will be more precisely tailored to their target group.

Pay-per-impressions is only available on the Display Network (on Google partner sites), this option is not available in search. If you want to use pay-per-impression, you will need to create a separate campaign. There you will be offered the following goals:

The effectiveness of payment for impressions very much depends on your ad, if it is not very successful, then this option can be much more expensive than clicks.

What else is useful in Google AdWords?

To section "Optimization" it's worth checking in sometimes, they show recommendations for your campaign. Google can suggest new keywords, change your budget, bid, and give you other tips. Of course, you should not follow them thoughtlessly, but you can read it, sometimes there is really useful information that you missed when creating ads.

Remarketing- a feature that is useful for some companies, you can read more about it in this article.

"Mass Operations" make it possible to automate many processes in AdWords, this functionality will be useful for those who work with a very large number of ads. The possibilities there are wide, you can even create your own scripts for your needs.

"General Library" stores elements that can be used in different campaigns or ads. If you know for sure that you have a lot of data that can be used repeatedly, then it is recommended to add them to the library, in the future this will simplify and speed up the work.

Negative keywords should be added to the shared library. Usually, one common list of negative keywords is suitable for different ads of the same company, so it’s better to work on it right away and then add it to any ad group.

"Reports" allows you to create reports on the mass of parameters and in various forms. It can be a table, chart or bar chart. I will not describe this feature of AdWords in detail, as there is a very good step-by-step guide for creating any reports.

Google AdWords seems to be more complicated than Yandex Direct, but in fact, it just gives you a lot more options. Which is better in terms of advertising? There is no answer to this question, it all depends on how you set up your ad campaign.