When to Use Each of the 18 Types of Google Ads

Describe Google Ads

One of the most effective channels for sponsored advertising is Google Ads. It not only gives you access to a wide range of advertising options, but also to users of the two biggest search engines in the world—Google and YouTube, respectively—as well as a network of millions of websites on which you may place advertisements.

However, there are numerous Google ad types, and not all of them are appropriate in all situations.

It's best to start by learning the necessary terminology and being aware of not only the different Google ads campaign types that are available to you but also what you can reasonably expect from them. This is true whether you intend to manage your own Google advertising or outsource it to a professional. In this manner, you will fully comprehend what the platform can achieve for you.

18 Different Types of Google Ads

In comparison to many other paid digital advertising networks, Google Ads shares several similarities. It operates on the pay-per-click (PPC) business model, so you only get charged when someone goes to your website. You may target audiences based on particular habits and demographics, create flexible budgets (beginning as low as $5), and get quick, quantifiable feedback on campaign results.

The fact that Google Advertisements can reach customers in three different ways—through search ads, display ads, and video ads—is what makes them particularly appealing. The campaign types you can conduct within these three categories are covered in this section.

Search ads

Unlike social media, consumers typically use search engines with a definite purpose in mind: to look for information, find solutions to their issues, or locate particular goods or services. Because of this, Google is a potent marketing tool for many different types of companies.

The typical monthly search traffic for a specific query, the expected cost per click, and other information Google makes available can all be used to guide your Google advertising decisions. You can run search advertisements that highlight your goods and services in the search results of a certain query and even focus your targeting on people in a specific region.

Let's say you market protein powder made from plants. Google receives more than 200,000 monthly searches for "protein powder," but much fewer for "vegan protein powder." Google will allow you place separate bids to advertise your brand on either of these terms, but the more precise search term will probably convert more effectively because it is more pertinent to your product.

You have the option to create text advertisements, which appear in search results marked with the term "Ad" in a tiny box, or Google Shopping ads, which highlight important purchasing details like product photographs, pricing, and ratings—making them ideal for many ecommerce firms.

Let's discuss the many categories of search ads:

1. Custom Google searches

• The aim is to attract those who are specifically looking for your brand online.
• High level of audience relevance. (They are trying to find you.)
• Low (25 to $3) is the estimated cost per click.
• Recommended for: When there is search intent for their particular brand, all firms, regardless of size and industry, are likely to see sales. If resources allow, give this campaign top priority.

Branded keywords include the precise names of a product or brand. For instance, the terms "Apple phone" or "iPhone" are synonymous with the company.

Even if your website currently ranks organically at the top of search results, you might not think to bid on your own brand name. However, doing so enables you to highlight specific information (using Google's ad extensions) and specify the precise page where you want people to land. Additionally, it guards you against rivals who might bid on your name or other branded terms.

Since your URL and your advertisements will be extremely relevant to visitors who search for you, CPCs for branded search are typically cheaper than for any other search campaign. Be cautious if your advertisement appears for related but unrelated keywords at the same time.

If you were promoting iPhones for Apple, you would omit terms like "apple picking," "apple cider," or even "how to upgrade my Apple iPhone" and focus your targeting by selecting the right keyword match types and negative terms.

Branded search marketing can support brand awareness initiatives because your potential revenue from branded search depends on how many people are actually seeking for you. For instance, a pop-up store or a popular Facebook video may increase brand name searches.

Implementation difficulty: If you are unfamiliar with search engine marketing, it may be difficult to implement this type of campaign. There may be a need for external or internal resources. Nevertheless, managing branded search doesn't require a lot of work, so give it priority if you can.

2. Google search ads without brands (generic)

• Goal: Reaching out to potential customers who might buy your items but aren't necessarily familiar with your brand in order to generate qualified intent-based traffic and possibly attract new clients.
• Low to medium audience relevance
• Average cost per click is between medium and high ($1 and $20).
• Everyone, but don't put this strategy ahead of some of the more successful efforts on this list. However, generic non-branded search should be a primary goal for brands trying to increase top-line revenue and acquire new customers.

Non-branded search campaigns, as their name suggests, focus on keyword expressions that don't specifically mention your brand or products. As a result, your costs will probably increase because you will be less relevant to users, especially for more general keywords (such as "purchase pillow" as opposed to "organic goose feather pillow in downtown Toronto").

This campaign aims to efficiently increase the number of new clients and visitors to your website. However, these campaigns can also offer advertisers a positive return on ad spend (ROAS) and enormous potential size.

Remember that a customer's lifetime worth from your brand, not just their initial purchase, determines how valuable they are.

Implementation difficulty: This form of search campaign can be challenging, as with all others. To manage and test your creative and landing sites for these campaigns, you need a lot of staff members. You also need a lot of funding to get results. To make sure these campaigns are managed properly, it is best to hire assistance.

3. Search without brands (niche)

• The objective is to attract new clients from specialized markets that are compatible with your niche offerings.
• Medium to high audience relevance. The more relevant you are to your audience, the more specialized that audience is and the better your product caters to that specialized audience.
• Approximately $1 to $20 per click, depending on the level of competition and the value of customers'/orders' to other marketers
• Recommended for: Businesses that sell niche goods or that aim to appeal to a certain clientele within a non-branded product category, such as "old NFL game memorabilia" or "vegan deodorant."

Compared to generic non-branded search campaigns, niche non-branded ones typically face less competition. That's because they're more particular and, if your products match what they're looking for, you'll become more relevant to the searcher's intent.

If your company and products are a good fit for niche marketing, you should consider running this kind of campaign. Because it offers a targeted audience that is simpler to identify and concentrate on, niche marketing, even outside of the framework of Google Ads, makes it much easier for firms to obtain traffic and, perhaps, a positive ROAS.

Generic non-branded search and niche non-branded search are frequently combined. However, for the reasons outlined above, it makes logical to categorize and discuss this traffic in its own campaign.

By placing bids on the exact branded keywords connected to your third-party items, you can also use this campaign type if you sell them. You can even include these brand names in your ad copy if you purchase these keywords as long as you link straight to a landing page with those products displayed.

Implementation difficulty: This campaign type, like other search efforts, is difficult to carry out and will need adequate resources to set up and maintain.

4. A campaign to hunt for rivals

• The objective is to attract new clients who may not be familiar with your company or your goods by positioning your name in front of consumers who are looking for your rivals.
• Low audience relevance (Users are looking for a certain rival rather than your brand.)
• Average cost per click is between medium and high ($1 and $20).
• Recommended for: Businesses interested in acquiring new customers who are already conducting profitable marketing campaigns. Additionally, retailers with high LTVs or those that are actively experimenting with various client acquisition strategies.

In essence, a rival search campaign is a branded search campaign turned around. You place bids on searches for your competitors' branded keywords rather than your own brand's name and goods.

Although it sounds like a good idea, stealing traffic from the terms of your biggest direct competitors can be quite pricey because, in this situation, searchers aren't most likely to be interested in seeing you, a rival company.

Brands that can justify the higher costs of obtaining a new customer with a potentially higher average order value or lifetime value typically use this method. Otherwise, you might not have much luck using this approach.

This might really be a very profitable campaign for you if a business isn't buying its own traffic or doesn't have a lot of brand loyalty among its customers and if your product is an equal or better alternative.

(One of the main reasons we strongly advise purchasing your own branded phrases is to avoid this kind of disruption from a rival.)

Note: You cannot utilize your competitor's name in your advertisements if the website you direct traffic to doesn't sell their products, nor should you employ dynamic keyword insertion when purchasing your competitor's branded keywords.

Implementation difficulty: This search campaign is difficult to execute and could cost a lot of money, as do all search efforts. Resources should be allocated specifically for managing this.

5. Google Shopping Ads (branded)

• Goal: Using your branded keywords to attract searchers who are especially looking for your products or product categories.
• High level of audience relevance. (They are trying to find you.)
• Low ($25–$3) estimated cost per click.
• For businesses that sell physical products and have previously made an investment in building their brand awareness, as well as those who feel comfortable making adjustments within Google Ads to set up this kind of campaign.

The user experience with Google Shopping campaigns is often excellent: after conducting a specific product search, a user is shown with images, pricing, and reviews of products that Google believes are pertinent. Customers go directly to that product page if they click the advertisement.

Users that expressly search for your brand are more likely to convert, so you may increase traffic from this source and manage your money more effectively if you can set up branded Shopping as a separate campaign. Otherwise, both branded and non-branded traffic will be included by default in shopping campaigns.

Without a segmented campaign approach, non-branded traffic will always outnumber branded traffic, and the majority of your spending will probably be used on non-branded terms with low conversion rates. Because of this, it's worthwhile to separate branded traffic into a separate Shopping campaign if you can (and have the traffic to benefit from it).

Implementation simplicity: Shopping campaigns are typically simpler to set up than search campaigns. Install Google Channel for Shopify or set up the Google Merchant Center manually to establish a successful product feed Google can pull from. To distinguish between branded and non-branded search traffic, you must set up separate campaigns for each type, use negative keywords, and prioritize your keywords so that only certain queries will see your advertising.

6. Google Shopping Ads (non-branded)

• The objective is to attract users who are specifically shopping for the product categories you sell but may not be specifically looking for your branded products.
• Low to medium audience relevance (They aren't necessarily looking for your products; they are looking for your product categories.)
• Cost per click prediction: medium ($0.25 to $20).
• Recommended for: The majority of businesses that market tangible goods. Except in cases when you have particular goals for new customers, expansion, or top-line revenue, this form of campaign should not take precedence over more profitable campaign types.

Similar to the previously mentioned branded Shopping campaign, you may establish a second campaign for non-branded Google Shopping.

Similar to non-branded search marketing, non-branded shopping campaigns function similarly. They are nearly always something that ecommerce businesses should do if they have the budget. A typical shopping campaign will effectively be 100% non-branded if you don't have any branded goods.

Implementation simplicity: While separating branded from non-branded traffic needs some setup, once done, you can create distinct non-branded Shopping campaigns and set aside a distinct budget for each.

7. Google Performance Max

• Goal: Using machine learning to generate lucrative orders through Google Shopping, remarketing, and display placements.
• Audience relevance: Variable because it combines several marketing kinds into one.
• Cost per click estimate: low to medium (25 to $5).
• Retargeting and/or Google Shopping campaigns are advised for Shopify merchants who wish to manage their campaigns with the least amount of effort.

On your behalf, Google Performance Max campaigns employ machine learning to optimize a combination of display, shopping, and retargeting advertisements. This campaign type selects the goods to promote, the amount to bid, the audience to target, and the creative to display.

Planning Advice: Integrating Google Shopping with Shopify? Learn how to sync, automate, and manage your Google Ads campaigns directly from Shopify by visiting the Shopify Google Channel.

The number of customers who look up your brand, items, product categories, or branded keywords will determine how well you do here. The volume of searches for your branded keywords and the size of your retargeting audience both affect how much retargeting and branded traffic you may generate through Shopping advertisements (i.e., how many people have visited your site already).

Performance: Ease of implementation Max is a pretty simple method to start using Google advertising, whether it be for Shopping or remarketing. In the future, there may be more of a possibility to switch to a segmented manual advertising plan if you see success.

8. Search adverts that are dynamic

• Goal: Using Google's automatic keyword generation to produce orders.
• Depending on the keyword choices Google's spider picks for your campaigns, audience relevance ranges from low to high.
• Cost per click estimate: low to medium (25 to $5).
• Recommended for: Anyone who wants to start anything to test it out without making a significant financial commitment but does not have the knowledge to manage a search campaign.

Dynamic search campaigns are basically campaigns for every single form of keyword Google finds on your website, including branded keywords, non-branded category keywords, product-specific keywords, keywords from your descriptions, and even even event keywords from your about page or blog.

Like other campaigns that group your visitors, this one lacks out-of-the-box segmentation, therefore we advise against scaling it and instead suggest using it as a starting point for custom segmentation as you gather performance data.

Implementation simplicity: This is a fantastic, quick, and simple approach to launch a search campaign online. Dynamic search campaigns may contain irrelevant terms that are on your site but that you would never manually purchase to increase traffic, despite the fact that it is simple to deploy.

Display advertisements

You can also use the Google Display Network to market your goods or services to prospective clients.

Through text, image, and video banner displays that appear as users browse the web, utilize apps, or watch videos, display advertising gives you the opportunity to reach individuals outside of Google's search engine results.

The Google Display Network, which includes advertising space on more than two million websites and 650,000 apps, reaches 90% of all internet users worldwide. Google display advertising are frequently seen at the top, in the sidebar, or even all throughout news websites.

Below are the several Google display ad types:

9. Topics and interest advertisements

• Advertising on websites in the Google Display Network that are related to a particular topic or interest area will help you achieve your goal of raising awareness of your product or service.
• Relevance to audience: This will rely on the demographics, interests, and themes you are aiming for, as well as how pertinent they are to your offering or point of view.
• Cost per click estimate: low to medium (25 to $3).
• Recommended for: Businesses who want to promote awareness of their product or service within a certain user group or that have identified a topic or interest that perfectly fits their target audience.

Through text, picture, and video banner displays that appear when users browse the web, utilize applications, or watch videos, display advertising gives you the ability to reach people outside of search engine results on more than two million publisher sites.

Although there are a few targeting alternatives available to you in this case, the most inclusive will be based on subjects and interests, which can include everything from cars and transportation to travel to homes and gardens.

Your ad will be displayed on any of the Display Network websites that fall within that category if topic-based targeting is used. Your adverts will be displayed to visitors who have just begun exploring such topics on websites in the Display Network thanks to interest-based targeting.

You might consider investing some of your ad testing cash in Google's equivalent if you're thinking about running these kinds of display campaigns on Facebook.

Implementation simplicity: Setting up a display campaign is rather simple, but to maximize its effectiveness, you'll need to omit specific keywords and placements (using negative keywords and negative placements).

10. Situational

• Goal: Increasing sales by displaying your advertising on pages in the Display Network that have a certain theme based on a collection of keywords. These pages will likely contain content about your product or service.
• Relevance to audience: This depends on the keyword themes you're focusing on and how pertinent the site's users and issues are to your messages and products.
• Low (25 to $3) is the estimated cost per click.
• Recommended for: Since you can put your product in front of users while they look up certain products or topics related to your business, most brands could argue that this should be one of the first upper-funnel campaigns to test. This kind of campaign is not appropriate for brands with a very low LTV, little prior experience with high-intent ads, or little interest in increasing brand awareness or acquiring new clients.

By placing your adverts on websites with content that contains the precise keywords you're targeting, contextual display enables you to be even more precise. This campaign type can be used to target material that contains specific brand-related or business-related keywords.

Instead of using Google to do their searches, users spend the majority of their online time engaging with and consuming information. To test and quantify lift, therefore, getting in front of people while they interact with material pertinent to your product or service is always a potentially viable strategy. The possibility to display your adverts (picture, text, video, etc.) to potential users without having to pay unless they click is excellent, even though it may not be given precedence over higher intent search campaigns.

Contextual campaigns are a wonderful place to start on the Display Network since they enable Google to display specialty websites where you might be able to directly target your audience.

Implementation simplicity: In general, you could start running this campaign if you knew how to group a few contextually pertinent terms and create an ad using Google. Although there is no app or direct integration to automate setup, it is not as difficult as search ads.

11. Coordinated placement

• The purpose is to raise awareness of your company's goods, services, or operations among visitors to a certain website.
• Relevance to audience: This will rely on the location chosen, the site's contents and visitors' general or specific nature, and how effectively your offering and messaging resonate with them.
• Average click-through price: $1 to $10.
• Recommended for: Companies who have found the ideal website for their target audience and market and want to promote their product or service there in order to increase awareness.

Managed placements for Display Ads allow you to choose the precise websites or even specific pages in the Google Display Network where you'd like to display your ad, giving you even more granular targeting and control than contextual placements. You can also directly acquire this kind of advertising with websites outside of Google, although the CPM costs will be greater.

Usually, you would launch this kind of campaign following the discovery of the precise web placements in your contextual or topic/interest display campaigns.

Implementation simplicity: If you have some experience and are familiar with the Google Ads platform, you should have no trouble setting up this campaign.

ad videos

You can advertise on Google-owned YouTube via the Google Ads platform. Although technically only one of the websites in the Google Display Network, YouTube receives the most unique visitors on the internet.

Every day, users watch more than a billion hours of YouTube content. There are several opportunities to interact with potential customers as a result. There are banner and overlay options in addition to the pre-roll advertisements that appear before YouTube videos.

To find out more about the many kinds of video ad campaigns you can run, keep reading.

12. Video campaigns within feeds

• Putting your video ad next to YouTube material that is pertinent to the user's search will help you reach more people on YouTube, increase sales, or promote your business.
• Medium to high audience relevance. (Audiences in this context are frequently responsive to video ads; but, whether they will watch them depends on how pertinent your video is to their search.)
• Low (10–30) estimated cost per click.
• Recommended for: Companies searching for a cheap approach to connect with YouTubers or other audiences with a particular interest.

On the YouTube main page, in search results, or in the related videos part of a watch page, in-feed video campaign commercials can be shown. Advertisers can choose the precise pages and queries they want to appear under with in-feed advertisements because they employ placement targeting.

When a brand's product or service addresses a prevalent problem that the consumer is looking for, in-feed advertisements are most effective. Although they are not required to, audiences are more likely to respond to video material when exploring YouTube.

When creating your campaign, keep in mind that an instructional video that highlights the advantages of your product or service is considerably more helpful than a link to your website's shopping cart, especially if your company is young and less well-known.

Implementation simplicity: If there is a particular search term or YouTuber audience you wish to target, in-feed video advertising are comparatively simple to implement. The advertisements themselves are quite inexpensive, but bear in mind that you will need to budget for production fees if you plan to produce video material.

13. In-stream ads

• Goal: Among YouTube's enormous user base, in-stream advertisements can assist increase conversion and attract new consumers.
• Low to medium audience relevance (Although in-stream advertisements can be successful if you're targeting the correct audience, they frequently come across as intrusive.)
• Low (10–30) estimated cost per click.
• Recommendation: Companies can considerably profit from YouTube's large user base by launching large-scale awareness campaigns.

If a YouTube video is longer than 10 minutes, in-stream advertisements may play before, after, or even during the video. Additionally, in-stream advertisements show up next to related videos on applications and websites that use Google Ads.

While skippable in-stream advertisements are only charged when a viewer sees at least 30 seconds of your video or the complete duration if your video is less than 30 seconds, non-skippable in-stream ads are charged based on the number of impressions.

Ease of implementation: Similar to in-feed advertisements, the campaign itself is quite simple to set up, however producing video content can be pricey.

14. Bumper Stickers

• Goal: Using a succinct, memorable message to increase conversions.
• Medium audience relevance. (Since bumper commercials are only six seconds long, they are less disruptive and foster a sense of urgency than longer ads.)
• Low (10–30) estimated cost per click.
• Retargeting with bumper advertisements works well since clients who have already made purchases from you require less information about your company or goods.

The shortest sort of video commercial that YouTube offers is called a bumper ad, and it lasts only six seconds. The time limit can be a hindrance if your goal is to increase brand awareness, but for companies trying to retarget prior customers, they can be the ideal, tactful reminder.

Implementing a campaign poses the same difficulties as doing so for other video campaigns, but since bumpers are shorter, production expenses might be lower.

15. Masthead advertising

• Goal: Increasing audience reach in less time.
• Low audience relevance (mastheads tend to reach more people, but there's a smaller likelihood the ad will be relevant to them)
• High estimated cost per click. Costs are negotiated based on conversion projections and your campaign objectives (Masthead advertisements must be reserved through a Google sales agent).
• Recommended for: Major brands trying to increase conversion for a particular item, occasion, or campaign.

Users of YouTube's desktop and mobile apps both see masthead advertisements at the top of the homepage feed. Masthead advertisements are difficult to ignore due to their size. Although the high visibility is a bonus, the ability to collaborate directly with the Google advertising team on the campaign is its major advantage.

The drawback is the high cost of masthead advertising campaigns. Running a less expensive video campaign will be far more profitable for newer brands on a small budget.

Masthead advertisements are quite challenging to deploy. Google must be contacted in order to schedule a campaign, and while the campaign itself may be brief, planning may take weeks or even months.

Other Google ad kinds

Since Google ad campaigns might include search, display, and video ads, some of them are more difficult to classify. Nevertheless, because they can provide particular difficulties and use-cases, these kinds of advertising efforts need discussion on their own.

16. Remarketing Ads 

• Goal: Targeting advertising to prospective customers who have already visited your website, looked through a certain category page, put products to their basket, or completed a purchase.
• High level of audience relevance. (They at least have already been to your website.)
• Low (25 to $3) is the estimated cost per click.
• Recommended for: All companies, especially those who generate traffic to their websites but don't engage in any remarketing.

Even while increasing traffic is the first step in turning visitors into customers, the majority of visitors are unlikely to immediately make a purchase or give any information. By most industry standards, a 2% client conversion rate is considered good, which means that 98% of visits won't result in a purchase, at least not on the first visit.

Retargeting is a tactic that enables you to continue to communicate with these off-site visitors, frequently at a lesser cost, in an effort to entice them back to your website with new, targeted messaging.

Retargeting is an effective tool that enables you to convert new visitors into repeat customers and, eventually, into first-time buyers. Additionally, it can be used to encourage repeat business by marketing to current clients. For instance, you can use YouTube's video advertisements to retarget individuals who have already visited your website. When combined with a current plan, this creates a stronger second impression and has the potential to be quite effective.

Since you are targeting particular customers who will be familiar with your brand regardless of the website your ad appears on, it doesn't matter where your advertising show in comparison to the other display campaign types discussed above.

However, in order to maximize your retargeting efforts, a lot more segmentation based on people who have more recently visited your website, looked through your product pages, or abandoned their carts will be necessary. You risk attracting customers who had no intention of making a purchase if you only target individuals who have visited your site in the previous 30 days.

The way you target a user who viewed a certain product and added it to their cart within the last 24 hours will differ from the way you target a person who visited your homepage 40 days ago, much like how there might be a large range of search phrases to take into account for non-branded search. You should adjust your expectations accordingly.

The purpose of retargeting is to develop a profitable technique you can use to convert previous visitors into consumers. While implementing this type of campaign isn't too tough, you'll need to set aside money to sustain it. You'll also need your own channel with videos posted to YouTube if you want to use YouTube retargeting for video ads.

17. Ads targeting the same audience

• Goal: By advertising to users who share your existing customer base's interests or traits, you hope to attract new clients and raise awareness.
• Relevance to audience: This will rely on how similar your original list of clients were, as well as how pertinent your service or product is to the group you're seeking to target.
• Cost per click approximation: Low (25¢ to $3).
• Recommended for: Businesses looking to test new client acquisition initiatives but have already set up and optimized their most lucrative programs. You'll need to provide a seed list of emails to Google to use as the basis for your "similar audience" targeting.

The same remarketing lists we mentioned with CRM are the foundation for similar audience initiatives (like Facebook's lookalike audiences). However, this campaign will employ similar consumers based on the information Google knows about them to target them instead of directly advertising to your current clients.

Google Adverts can match your ads to other users on the Google Display Network who have similar interests to your seed audience in order to target them with relevant content.

Implementation simplicity: While we advise starting with intent-based advertisements, testing similar audiences on Facebook may also be a good way to test and evaluate performance.

18. Google app campaigns

• The objective is to persuade users to download a particular program from the Google Play store.
• Medium to high audience relevance.
• Low (10–30) estimated cost per click.
• Recommended for: Companies wishing to market their own mobile application.

An app ad campaign might be quite helpful if you have an app available on the Google Play app store. Google provides download links to users during the campaign on Google search, YouTube, the Google Play app store, websites where Google advertising are displayed, and other Google partners and publishers.

KPIs like clicks, app installs, or even pre-registration can be used in your campaign (if your app is not yet finished). Google monitors the effectiveness of your campaign across all of its platforms and makes algorithmic adjustments to show the most effective advertisements throughout the campaign.

Implementation simplicity: Although there are more moving elements in app campaigns than in other types of marketing, they can be very effective if you're selling an app in the Google Play store.

Optimize your Google ad campaign

It's not simple to succeed with Google Ads, we won't sugarcoat that. But any e-commerce company that is ready to learn how to market to Google's enormous user base based on search intent and a range of other targeting choices and placements might gain from using the Google Ads platform.

Now that you know what is feasible on the Google Ads platform, what to anticipate from the various campaign types available, and how they can interact with the rest of your marketing engine, perhaps you have a better knowledge of what is possible.

Knowing the platform and your possibilities is a wonderful first step, whether you decide to spend the time and money learning how to run your own campaigns or use the services of an agency or specialist.