Dynamic Keyword Insertion (or DKI) is a fancy way of saying whatever the person types when they search, it will be repeated back to them if your ad shows up. There are character limits on text ads though, so you have to set a default so that if the person types in something particularly detailed e.g.
“I want an Google Ads manager who is willing to provide me a guarantee”
There is no way that DKI can put the above into the ad as it is too long, so you specify a default (the above video shows the default is “Google Ads management”).
As the video shows, the format for DKI is:
{KeyWord: Default Text}
It can be used in any part of the ad (not just the headline) including the display URL and how you capitalise the word keyword will determine the case (lower case, title case or sentence case. This is all good information, but quite recently Google Ads added the drop down box where as soon as you add “{“ Google Ads will help you through the rest – all you have to understand is the theory of DKI to make your way through it.
Disadvantages of Adwords Dynamic Keyword Insertion
There was a time where I was using DKI in almost all my accounts, but I quickly learnt that although DKI can be great for CTR and at times average position, how the account is setup is a factor when deciding if you should use DKI.
If you have a very targeted Google Ads account and care more about quality and ROI than volume and you have set your account up to meet these goals, it is probable DKI could work for you, if on the other hand your account is more broad in its targeting and you are looking for high volume, I do not recommend DKI. A lot of this can be determined when checking your Search Query Report if you find you have a lot of high quality search terms, great DKI is for you, if you require a lot of negatives and the quality of your SQR is low, DKI will make it worse – you will get more clicks for the less relevant terms and waste more money.
Lastly in a lot of tests we have found that although DKI gets more clicks, it gets a higher cost per conversion, if you decide to go ahead and implement Google Ads dynamic keyword insertion, google analytics has a great section where you can see how the different ad content influences the type of visitor you get, just add a secondary dimension by going to “advertising” and then “ad content”.