Inside Google Ads podcast: Episode 21 - Ads

I was looking up some shoes last week. I had to find some new sandals for summer, and I saw an ad that mentioned a Christmas sale. 

Dear listener, it is mid-June. 

Someone had not updated their Google Ads assets. And it got me thinking, now is a perfect time to answer your burning questions about ad creative in Google Ads. 

It's what I spoke about at the MnSearch Summit last week, and it's what we're talking about right now. 

I'm your host, Jyll Saskin Gales. I spent six years working for other brands at Google, and now I work for you. 

This is Inside Google Ads, Episode 21, Ads. 

Our first question comes from Maheenjr on Instagram, and they ask, hey, maybe a dumb question, but how often should we change ad copies to avoid ad fatigue in the audience? And should we just edit the titles and descriptions or add new ones? I'm asking because when I add new ad copies, they barely get any impressions with automated bidding strategies. 

Thanks for your question, Maheen, and let's break this down bit by bit. 

So to your first part, ad fatigue. Does it really happen with Google Search Ads the way it would happen with a TikTok ad or an Instagram ad? 

No, and here's why. With ads on social platforms, you are proactively putting your image or video ad in front of your audience again and again and again. They're not asking for it, right? You're putting it there. 

And so fatigue can happen over time when those users start to tune out whenever they see your ad. But with a Search Ad, they're looking for you. They're coming to Google and looking for something. Also, it's text, which is not as memorable as an image or a video. And they're probably only seeing the ad once when they're specifically seeking it out. They're not seeing it again and again and again as it interrupts the thing they're trying to do. 

So because of that, ad fatigue, for text ads at least, is not really a thing. That being said, you bring up a great point that when you do edit your headlines or descriptions, sometimes they just won't get any impressions because the campaign has already figured out which are its favorite assets. 

So here's a few tips I have around that. 

First of all, assuming you have an established campaign, I do recommend doing a quarterly creative review. All the text, all the images, all the videos to ensure, first of all, that you're not doing what this shoe business did, advertising a Christmas sale in June, but also just to make sure things are up to date, see how they're performing, and find opportunities. 

Now, secondly, I'll say just because something has a “Best” performance rating, doesn't mean it's best for you. 

I'll give you an example. There was a business I used to manage ads for, and we had an App campaign, and App campaigns work like Performance Max. You give it headlines and descriptions and images, and it just takes it from there. 

So one of the headlines was “Canada Jobs” and another headline was “Hiring Nurse Practitioners.” And this was a job app that only hired healthcare workers. But here's what happened. The “Canada Jobs” headline was ranked Best and “Hiring Nurse Practitioners” was ranked Low. 

Why?

Because, of course, a “Canada Jobs” headline is applicable to anyone in Canada searching for a job, whereas a “Hiring Nurse Practitioner” headline was only applicable to people who are nurse practitioners. 

So “Hiring Nurse Practitioner” would have had a way lower click-through rate. However, if someone who's not a nurse practitioner downloaded the app, they would be sorely disappointed when they saw there were only healthcare jobs there. 

So even though “Canada Jobs” was best and “Hiring Nurse Practitioner” was worst, in this example, I actually removed the “Canada Jobs” headline because I realized it was not doing the right thing. It was appealing to too broad an audience. 

So something to keep in mind is that those performance ratings you'll see in your Responsive Search Ads or your Performance Max Ads or any kind of Responsive Ad of course are helpful, but they're not the end all be all of what's actually driving best business results. 

Okay, a third thing I'll share is, this just anecdotally, this isn't in the documentation anywhere, but I've noticed that the first three headlines and the first two descriptions that you put into a Responsive Search Ad tend to show first, and as a result, may end up showing more. 

I think this may be a hangover in the system from Expanded Text Ads, which for those who've been doing Google Ads long enough, will remember those had three headlines and two descriptions. 

So if you're throwing in new headlines and descriptions and they're not serving, try copying and pasting those into one of the first few slots, and then taking one of the ones in the first few slots and just parking it in the later slot, like slot 10 for headlines, or slot 4 for descriptions. I don't know why that works, but I've seen that work. 

And then the last thing I'll say for testing is there's a relatively new feature in Google Ads, still technically in beta, for headline and description assets. And when I say assets, I mean the assets formerly known as extensions. 

So you can create headlines or descriptions now outside of a Responsive Search Ad and then set them to run across campaigns, for example. 

If you want to do some testing, you can create a headline asset and apply it to various campaigns, or description assets and apply to various campaigns. You can do scheduling for these and it can be a good way to test before actually going in and editing your Responsive Ad. 

So those are some tips to help you get some impressions on new ad copy if you're not getting it by just editing your existing Responsive Search Ads. 

Alright, our second question today, well, it's actually two questions that were very similar from TikTok. They were both about Dynamic Insertion.

King Online Marketing says, can you use this in the body of the ad too? Meaning, can you use Dynamic Insertion in a description as well as a headline? 

And Just Just-mi-n-u on TikTok asked, does this affect the length of the field when you use dynamic insertion?

So let's back up a step. What is Dynamic Insertion? 

No, it's nothing dirty. It's a great trick for your Responsive Search Ads. 

Dynamic Insertion lets you create one headline or one description that will dynamically, meaning automatically, change itself based on the user. And there are three kinds you can use in your headlines or your descriptions. 

The first is Dynamic Countdown Insertion, and what that does is lets you insert a countdown into your ad. 

So let's say, for example, you're running a countdown to Christmas sale. You would enter in your ad, Christmas is the final day, December 25th, and then your ad would dynamically update to show, you know, five days left, four days left, three days left. And then when it gets closer, it might say 12 hours left, five hours and four minutes left. And then when it gets really, really close, it would say 32 minutes left, etc. So it's this countdown that you don't have to keep updating. It'll dynamically, automatically update how close it is to the date and time you set. 

Of course, you have to remember to remove it afterward because it's going to eat up one of those spots when it's at zero, because the time has arrived. So that's a Countdown Insertion, great for ecommerce, great for holiday sales. 

Next is Dynamic Location Insertion. This is great for local businesses. You can have it dynamically insert the user's location into the ad text, their country, their state or province, depending on what country you're in, or their city. 

For example, let's say you operate in, I don't know, Dallas, and you offer window cleaning. But you also serve Fort Worth, and whatever the different cities around Dallas are. You could use Dynamic Location Insertion. So if people are searching in a city nearby, it could say “window washing in Dallas”, or “window washing in Fort Worth.” It would update based on where they are , with only using up one asset within your ad. Pretty cool. Dynamic Location Insertion. 

And then the third one, which these questions are about, is Dynamic Keyword Insertion. And what it does is it inserts the keyword that matches to the user's query into your ad. 

So let me give you a practical example. Let's say your keyword is “Google Ads course.” You create a headline that says “Best…” and then has Dynamic Keyword Insertion. If someone searched “What is the best Google Ads course,” this headline could show up and say “Best Google Ads course.” If someone just searched “Google Ads course,” then it would say “Best Google Ads course.”

But let's say you have another keyword in the ad group that's “AdWords course,” because some people search that way. If someone searched for “AdWords course online” that would match to your keyword “AdWords course” and the headline would now read “Best AdWords course.” So rather than needing one headline for “Best Google Ads course” and another headline for “Best AdWords course,” you can just have one headline that will dynamically update based on the language the user uses. 

But importantly, really important, it's not putting what the user typed into Google into your headline. You can imagine how that could wreak havoc. It's going to put the keyword into your headline that matched to the user's search. 

All right, those are your three kinds of Dynamic Insertion. 

So now we can answer these questions. 

Can you use Dynamic Insertion in the body of the ad, too? Yes, you can use it in headlines or descriptions. 

And does this affect the length of the field? The length of the field doesn't change when you use Dynamic Insertion. It's just whatever's in there will count towards the character limit, and that's why you need a default text. 

Let's say you had the keywords “Google Ads course,” “AdWords course,” “best Google Ads course online.” Now, “best Google Ads course online,” off the top of my head, that's probably more than 30 characters. You couldn't include that whole thing in a headline. If you had Dynamic Keyword Insertion and someone was searching for that, it couldn't insert that. It's too many characters. 

So that's why when you create Dynamic Keyword Insertion, you need something called default text. And that's like the fallback text, if for whatever reason it can't put that keyword into the headlines. This also applies to Location Insertion. If the name of the city where the person is is too long, you need a default that it's going to fall back on.

That is how you use Dynamic Insertion, and I recommend everyone give it a try. It's a great way to increase your ad strength (if ad strength is something you care about). Something I do care about is ad relevance, it is a great way to increase that. 

Alright, if you think Dynamic Insertion is a cool trick, I've got lots more tips like that up my sleeve. I can audit your Google Ads account and find opportunities to improve performance that you may not have thought of. 

I get hired by business owners, by agencies, and get this, I've even had Google reps recommend me to their clients saying, “You should get your account audited by Jyll Saskin Gales.” It's pretty cool, right? 

You can visit my website to learn more about my Google Ads account audits. The link is also in the episode description. 

Our third question today comes from 🧚 on TikTok. That was their username, just a fairy emoji. And they asked, can you adjust a current Google Ad to be a Call-only Ad? 

No, you can't, but you can add a Call-only Ad to an existing Search Ad group.

A Call-only Ad, which is actually just called a Call Ad now, is a special kind of Search Ad you can run that primarily shows up on mobile. And rather than the headline in bright blue linking to your website, instead, the headline in bright blue will say “Call…” and then your phone number. 

So if the user clicks on it, it doesn't go to your website. Instead, it opens their phone app pre-populated with your phone number. This can be really helpful if phone calls are what you care about for your business. 

If your website's not really optimized, a lot of local service businesses use this. If you'd like to get phone calls, Call Ads are a great way to do so. 

So what do you have to do to run a call ad? You need to have an existing campaign and ad group first, and then you go to Ads and you hit the + button, but instead of adding a regular Search Ad, you choose Call Ad.

When you create your Call Ad, of course, you have to put your phone number in. You have the option to put your website there as well, and it could show as part of the ad, just smaller and not as prominent as if it were a regular Search Ad. And then you can add up to two headlines and two descriptions, so that's where you can borrow some headlines and descriptions from your existing Search Ads, but you do need to create a new ad to be a Call Ad, just because it works differently and has different requirements than a Responsive Search Ad. 

One thing I'll say with Call Ads, although you can have those two headlines and two descriptions, the characters can get cut off, so make sure you put the most important stuff first, and you don't have to use the entire character requirement. 

We have covered a lot of ground today about your ad creative and ensuring you have the most effective ads possible in Google Ads. 

So now it's on to our Episode 21 Insider Challenge. And this is actually a quiz question for you rather than our typical challenge. 

Throughout this episode, I've referred a few times to headlines having up to 30 characters. But did you know there are actually five different types of headlines in Google Ads, each with different character requirements depending on what kind of ad you're running? 

I wish I was making that up. 

So here's your challenge. The first person to message me and correctly answer this question will get one free month of access to my signature membership course Inside Google Ads. 

Are you ready? Here's the question. What are the five different headline character requirements in Google Ads?

I'll give you the first one, the most common one. It's 30 characters. What are the other four? 

You can participate by sending me your response to this challenge or any episode’s challenge. The beauty of the Insider Challenge is there's no right or wrong answer, just an opportunity to stretch your brain on real-life Google Ads problem solving. 

Although I will say with this week's Insider Challenge, there is a right or wrong answer, which is why I'm offering a prize, and that prize will expire when the next episode drops on June 27th, 2024, because, of course, I will be sharing the answer then. 

So if you're listening to this after June 27th and you can't wait to find out, just click on go to the next episode. 

All right, the last episode's challenge was this. You're looking at your account and you see that your Impression Share is less than 10% and most of it is lost due to rank. What is the first thing you would want to look at to try to increase your Impression Share? What's the second? And what's the third? 

Here's what I think. 

We know that ad rank is a function of price and quality. So the first thing I'm looking at is my Bid strategy. And the second thing I'm looking at is my Quality Score, right? My price and my quality. 

Step one, if I'm on a Maximize Bid strategy, then my bids are being set by my budget. So a budget increase would allow my bids to increase. If I'm on a Target strategy, then my bids are being set by my target. So I'd see if it's possible to increase my CPA target by 10% or decrease my ROAS target by 10%, because both of those will allow my bids to increase. 

Step two, I'd look at my Quality Score. I like to do this by exporting a Keyword Report to Google Sheets. It's a lot easier to see that way. And if I have more than 20 keywords, let's say, in the campaign across my ad groups, then I'm going to do a pivot table so I can see the trends across all my keywords. If I just have one campaign with 10 to 15 keywords, I'll do it in the interface. 

And I want my Quality Score to mostly be in the 6+ range, 6 to 10. And across the three components of Quality Score, I like them to be average or above average. So if there's any that are below average, and I don't just mean one or two keywords below average, like maybe I have 20 keywords and for 15 of them, my Ad Relevance is below average. That means, “Okay, I need to work on my Ad Relevance” so I’ll put a test or two together to fix that. And if you need some ideas about how to improve your expected click-through rate, ad relevance or landing page experience, I spoke about this in detail in Episode 11, if you need a refresher. 

Now, step three, there are a lot of directions I could go in from here, depending on what I find in steps one or two. I can't see my Auction Insights since my Impression Share is less than 10%, so I’d probably look at Keyword Planner for step three to see benchmark CPCs on my keywords and how my CPCs compare to them. That's going to help me choose a course of action in step one, if I do need to adjust my bids, or if my bids are not the problem and it's more of a quality issue. 

What do you think? What would you look at first to increase your Impression Share if it's being lost due to rank? 

Shoot me an email at thegooglepro@jyll.ca, that's J-Y-L-L dot C-A, or send me a voice note in my Instagram DMs. I'm @the_google_pro on Instagram.  

I'm Jyll Saskin Gales and I'll see you next time Inside Google Ads.

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