Chapter 5 is about the settings tab. Upon campaign creation, people tend to glance over this tab due to time limitation. Unfortunately for those people, it is a very important part of the process.
The first option we come to is the “campaign type”:
Probably the most frequent option is search network only – possibly because for the most part (exceptions apply), the best results come from search. Other reasons because a lot of people don’t seem to know that Google are operating across the display network.
Within the search network you have 5 different options, first being standard, then all features, mobile app engagement, dynamic search ads and lastly call only.
Standard essentially means that it is on Google search; however there are less options available within the settings – all this means is that it is for the less advanced users.
The all features option gives you more control over your settings and has more options available; I would recommend all features unless you are not confident on Google Ads.
Mobile app engagement is not really relevant unless you have your own app for your own company, so it is not going to be used anywhere near as much as the other options.
Dynamic search ads are an option available for companies which have a lot of pages or products that they offer and the ad that is shown to the visitor is based on your website content, so dynamically changes based on what the searcher has typed in.
Call only campaigns are for people searching on mobile devices and instead of visiting the website they would have the option to call your business, so instead of paying for clicks you are paying for calls.
Other options are “search network with display select” this is essentially similar to search network in that your ads will show on Google search and perhaps partners, however with display select it means that your text ads will also show on the display network. This means that ads will be shown across websites which accept Google advertising when Google thinks that it is likely the user viewing the ad will convert from a visitor to a customer.
Next setting is Networks – it is an option which allows you to include search partners or exclude search partners – what this means is Google has some other search engines which it shows ads on. One good example at the time of writing this article which Google works with is Ask Jeeves.
Ask Jeeves is another search engine which a fair amount of people go to and instead of Ask Jeeves doing their own ads they allow Google to advertise on it.
Search partners can vary in their performance but as a general rule it tends to perform quite well, there doesn’t tend to be any increase or decrease in performance, so all I would say about this is to monitor it and there is a way of doing that which is explained in a previous chapter.
So if you were to select Google search network or un-tick the box which says include search partners, then your ads will only show on Google search and nowhere else and if you were to tick the box it would show on the list of other websites which also have search engines.
The devices option underneath allows you to decide whether you would like to show your ads on mobile devices or if you would like to increase or decrease the amount you are willing to pay by a percentage for mobile devices.
So if you wanted to switch mobiles off and didn’t want to show your ads on mobile devices, you would do a decrease of 100%. If you thought that it was unprofitable or less profitable to advertise on mobiles then you might do a decrease of say 50% or if you thought it was more profitable depending on your business then you would do an increase.
What this means is you would set a standard bid e.g. £1 and based on this particular setting, Google Ads would increase or decrease the bid based on what you enter in here. A lot of the time mobile devices don’t perform as well as desktops or tablets, but really this should be a reactive action, rather than a proactive one, which means based on the data which you have collected in your account over a period of time, it will tell you how profitable mobile devices are or unprofitable mobile devices are, as a result of that data you would set your increase or decrease of the mobile device bid.
Locations are fairly self explanatory, it is where you would like your ads to come up or to show to people. The only complexity to this is the advanced options underneath, in this case we are targeting the United Kingdom, however the location options or advanced options underneath you have the settings which are asking you if you would like to target people who are physically in that location or show an interest in that targeted location.
It is quite a big difference and you have the option to change that so you are only showing ads to people that are physically in the United Kingdom, whereas the default option includes people who are interested in that location, this can be important as you will be showing ads to the whole world providing they are interested in the United Kingdom if you stick with the default option. You will see when your ads start to show the user location in the dimensions tab.
The languages option allows you to pick which predominant language the person speaks based on the browser they are using, people often get confused and think this is the language the visitor is searching in, this is not the case it is simply the browser they are using.
It is worth remembering because if they search for your keyword and are physically located in the United Kingdom, your ad won’t show if you only have English selected if they are predominately another language speaker e.g. if they are using a Spanish browser because they are a Spanish individual but if they search for the product or service you provide and they are physically in the UK and you haven’t got all languages selected, your ad won’t show.
The bid strategy option allows you to select either manual CPC where you will actually select the amount you are willing to pay, Automatic where Google Ads will automatically set the amount and try and get you the most clicks possible. Enhanced is an option where Google Ads will set the bids based on historical conversion data. Conversion optimiser where you are able to select a maximum cost per conversion and Google Ads will try and work to (target or max cost per conversion), or you can try and create your own bid strategy – an amazing video from Google can be found within the here.
The budget that you select is a per day budget this is important to calculate as if you set a certain amount of spend per day, it accumulates very quickly so I would calculate your monthly budget that you are willing to spend and then divide it by 30 days and that will be your per day budget. You also have the option of sharing budgets across multiple campaigns (see below).
The delivery method is a way that Google Ads will spend your budget, the options are standard versus accelerated and I advise you read up on this. This is a very important part of Google Ads and a very tactical option.
There is no right way for delivery method it is simply based on your unique campaign and can be something which impacts the success of your campaign considerably.
The advanced settings at the bottom involve ad scheduling and start date, start date is fairly self explanatory, but ad scheduling is where you would pick what time of the day you would like your ads to show throughout your chosen days.
Ad delivery or ad rotation give you the option of the way you display your ads and it is important when split testing. You also have the option to split test within the experiment drop down below it (split testing is finding out what the most effective thing is by testing one against another).
IP exclusions allows you to stop showing ads to people that have a particular IP address, this can be useful if your staff members are not aware that when they click on an ad it is charging you and also important if you are concerned about competitors that might be clicking on your ad with intention to spend your budget. Google Ads tend to be very good at filtering this out and the concern that often comes from this type of discussion is normally unjustified.
The dynamic search ads option is only applicable if you are running a dynamic search campaign and the campaign URL options is for people that wish to ad URL extensions to the end of their URL where they have another way of or a piece of software to use for different or advanced tracking.
This particular post – the reason why I have gone through the settings tab is because when people create their campaigns they tend to glaze over this part of the process, and if you understand the settings when you are creating your campaign, you will know it is not something you should glaze over and can be the difference between a profitable and unprofitable campaign.