Inside Google Ads podcast: Episode 35 - Display

Are Display ads worth it in Google Ads? 

Performance Max campaigns include Display. App campaigns include Display. Video campaigns have the option to include Display, though you probably don't want to use it. And Search campaigns have the option to include Display, though you definitely don't want to use that. 

Is my bias showing yet? 

Well alright, let's explore this further. What's the deal with Display campaigns? 

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

This is Inside Google Ads, Episode 35: Display Campaigns. 

Our first question today comes from shevibesveg on Instagram, and they say, the issue we are finding with Display is that all the spam placements are spammy, even after adding tons of exclusions. 

You got it. That definitely happens with Display. 

So let's back up a step to make sure we're all speaking the same language here. 

What is Display? 

Display campaigns in Google Ads let you show ads on 35 million websites and apps and on Google-owned properties. A few episodes back, Episode 32, was all about Demand Gen campaigns, which are similar to Display in a lot of ways. The key differences though are Demand Gen campaigns only show on Google-owned properties - YouTube, Gmail, Discover - whereas Display campaigns show ads on these millions of websites and apps as well as Google-owned properties.

And Demand Gen campaigns only let you use audience targeting. Display campaigns let you use all kinds of audience and content targeting.

You can also use almost every bid strategy in Display campaigns, whether it's impression- or click- or conversion-based.

And Display ads use Responsive Display Ads. You can have text, image, and video, and place your ads in dozens of different kinds of ad slots across those 35 million websites and apps. 

So what's the downside? Why did I say upfront I have some bias against it?

Well, unlike Search or Demand Gen, where your ads are showing on Google Search or Google's Gmail or Google's YouTube or Google's Discover, Display Ads show on the Display Network. Those are websites and apps that monetize using Google AdSense. 

So let's say I have a blog, which I do actually, but I haven't done this. Let's say with my blog, I want to start making money when people visit my blog. I could sign up for Google AdSense, and then I put ad space on my website, and Google then places ads there for me when Google Ads users run Display campaigns. Then I, as a publisher, would get a cut of Google's revenue. 

So when you, as an advertiser, pay for your Display ads, a cut of that goes to the actual publishers, the owners of those websites and apps where your ads showed. This is how a lot of blogs and publishers make money; news sites, apps, but also a lot of low-quality garbage websites and yes, spammy sites, which are set up solely to get fake clicks or accidental clicks and make a ton of money at the advertiser's expense. 

So how do we fight this? 

A few different ways. You can add placement exclusions, as this user has done, picking specific websites or apps you don't want to show ads on anymore.

But if that's just a game of whack-a-mole you can't keep up with and you're still getting a ton of spam placements, here are three things you can try, in the order I'd recommend trying them. 

First, you're going to want to check your content exclusions in your campaign-level settings. This is where you can choose to exclude things like “mature content” or “content that's not yet labeled”. You can exclude sensitive content like “tragedy and conflict” or “sensational and shocking,” or you can exclude certain content types like “parked domains" or “live streaming.” So try excluding whole kinds of content, which will be broad strokes, but maybe help with the spam issue more than just playing whack-a-mole with placement exclusions based on your Placements Report.

If that's not doing enough, my next recommendation would be to change your bid strategy. Focus your Display campaign on a conversion-focused bid strategy rather than just an impressions- or clicks- or visibility-based bid strategy. Remember, Google Ads campaigns will do exactly what you tell them to, so if you're bidding on Manual CPC and you're bidding five cents a click, yeah, you're going to get garbage and spam because that's all you can afford.

If changing your bid strategy doesn't work either, then I recommend trying Demand Gen instead. I find that the spam is much less of an issue with Demand Gen because your ads are only showing on YouTube, Gmail, and Discover, so there are no spam placements there. AdSense isn't a factor. When you pay for your ad, all that money is just going to Google. And those are mostly Google signed-in users, as I mentioned a few episodes back, so if Display is still failing you with lots of spam and you just can't get past it, try a Demand Gen campaign. 

Inside Google Ads is exclusively sponsored by Optmyzr, the ultimate platform for managing Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and paid social ads through automation layering.

This month, Optmyzr is releasing a series of global studies unveiling key findings about, Performance Max, Ad strength, optimization score, bid strategies, and more, and what they mean for your Google Ads account.

I've learned some really useful tips that have actually changed the advice I'm giving, what I advise my students and my clients, all based on these Optmyzr studies. 

If you want to learn more, sign up to be notified as each new Optmyzr study goes live. The link is in the episode description. And if you want to test Optmyzr for yourself, you can sign up for a free full functionality trial. The link is in the episode description. 

And once you're in there, I recommend checking out the PPC Investigator tool first. That's one of my favorite parts of Optmyzr. Our next question today comes from sahibk91 on Instagram. And they ask, Hi, Jyll. Thanks for these amazing tips. I had one question in particular. One of the accounts I'm handling gets a lot of calls and email clicks on the website. I am assuming these are fake roboclicks. These also show in stats for Display Remarketing campaigns as well. Any suggestions on how we can improve this? 

First thing’s first, a call or lead that doesn't convert, or one that is looking for a job rather than looking to buy from you, is not spam. Episode 6 of this podcast was actually about how you can stop getting spam leads from Google Ads, and as I mentioned there, and I'll mention again, it's really important to know that distinction. 

Is this a real person contacting you, and they just aren't an ideal customer? Or are bots robocalling you or autofilling your form and a real person isn't actually there? 

If it's a tech problem, we fight back with tech. So if it's bots, you can have something like reCAPTCHA on your form so they can't submit it. And there are other things you can do with your phone number, though it's more likely it’s coming from telemarketers or people looking up your public domain registration and not, like, spam robots calling you from your Google Ads. 

Now, if it's an ad targeting problem, we fight back with better ad targeting. So if real people, but not your ideal customers, are clicking your ads and calling you or filling out your form, we revisit our targeting.

We can add audience exclusions; so if your product is only relevant for homeowners, exclude renters. If you only serve large companies, only target people who work at large companies. 

You can create a Combined Segment if you want to show Display Remarketing ads, but only if they've been to your website AND fit another requirement. Episode 24 about audience layering walks you through this if you didn't catch that one. 

And of course, my go-to answer: try changing your bid strategy. If it's still an issue, use a conversion-focused bid strategy, and implement offline conversion tracking to ensure you're only giving Google Ads credit for real, valuable conversions. 

My guest expert in Episode 29 will tell you more about that. Or you can try remarketing from a Demand Gen campaign rather than Display if you just can't get around this issue. 

If you want to learn how to set up and optimize a Display campaign, I've got fresh tutorials on everything you need to know, like how to choose a bid strategy, creating Responsive Display Ads, audience vs. content targeting, and more. Check out my course, Inside Google Ads, at learn.jyll.ca, that's J-Y-L-L dot C-A, or simply follow the link in the episode description. 

Our final question today comes from lucawiebutter on TikTok, and they ask, what's the best way to do retargeting in Google Ads? 

You can do retargeting in Search, Shopping, Display, Demand Gen, Video, App, and Performance Max. So as of today, every single Google Ads campaign type lets you retarget, meaning showing ads to people your business already knows. 

Now, there are four types of retargeting in Google Ads, and you can set them all up in Audience Manager, which you'll find on the left-hand side under Tools, Shared Library, and Audience Manager. Google calls retargeting “Your Data Segments,” a lovely euphemism, but it means retargeting, or my preferred word, remarketing. 

So what are those four types of remarketing in Google Ads?

First is website remarketing. That's showing ads to people who visited your website before or interacted with specific parts of your website. You can set up website remarketing via the Google Tag or Google Analytics 4, and I actually talked about the pros and cons of both in Episode 4, way back near the beginning of this podcast, if you missed that. 

The second type of remarketing you can do in Google Ads is YouTube remarketing, showing ads to people who've interacted with your YouTube channel, like your subscribers or people who've watched certain videos.

There's also a new feature; if a YouTube creator has made a video for your brand, you can link that video to your Google Ads account and remarket to people who watch that video, even if it wasn't posted on your YouTube channel. 

Now, remember, a view on YouTube means they watched at least 30 seconds or the end of the video, whichever came first. So when you're doing YouTube remarketing based on people who viewed a video, you're only remarketing to people who viewed it, meaning who viewed at least 30 seconds, or if it's a short video, the whole thing, not just people who maybe watch 1 or 2 seconds and moved on, or who watch six seconds and click skip. So a YouTube remarketing audience is quite an engaged audience. 

The third type of remarketing you can do in Google Ads is remarketing to your customer list. You can either connect your CRM directly to Google Ads or you can manually upload a file with emails, phone numbers, or mailing addresses of customers, and then show ads to that list. 

And the fourth kind of remarketing you can do in Google Ads is app remarketing, showing ads to people who have your app on their phone or have interacted with your app in certain ways. 

So what's the best? 

Well, the most common and easiest to use is website remarketing. The best is probably a customer list because that's your own first-party data. It's the most accurate targeting and someone who has purchased from you before, or at least given you their phone number or their email address, that's like the most valuable kind of information you can get from somebody rather than someone who maybe visited your website once or twice, but didn't choose to interact further and share their information with you. 

There are a lot of strategies to use remarketing beyond Display or Demand Gen. YouTube remarketing is so underrated. Search Remarketing, which is also called RLSA (Remarketing Lists for Search Ads), isn't talked about enough outside advanced practitioner circles, also a great tactic. And I once ran a very successful Shopping campaign exclusively targeting a website remarketing audience. 

We can do a whole episode about advanced retargeting strategies. Let me know if you'd like that. 

But to wrap up today, in my professional opinion, Display Ads are not worth it in Google Ads. They're a blunt instrument in a place where we have better, more sophisticated tools.

If you're using Display for image-based ads, try Demand Gen. If you're using Display because your goal is awareness rather than conversion, try video. If you're using Display because you want to use content targeting, also try video. If you're using Display because you want to do remarketing, try literally any other campaign type. Performance Max would be a great bet for that objective, especially for ecommerce. 

Now, are all Display campaigns bad? 

No, of course not. I'm sure I already have some of you shaking your head at me while you're listening. Like, “That's a bad take, Jyll!”

That is A-OK. For the vast majority of use cases in 2024, I will recommend an alternative to Display to drive better results for your Google Ads investment.

I do not think Display is worth it, but if Display campaigns work well for you, that is fabulous. Keep on keeping on. 

Today's Insider Challenge is this. You've been running Google Ads successfully for some time, focused on Search and Standard Shopping campaigns. Separately, organic email marketing works well for your business. You get a lot of sales when you email your list, so you figure a remarketing strategy is long overdue. What kind of campaign do you launch for your first remarketing campaign? And what type of remarketing do you use? 

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.

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.

Last episode's challenge was this. You're on a Maximize Conversion Value bid strategy and you're getting 28 conversions a month, on average. It's been that way for a few months and you can't increase the budget. You're hitting your CPA goal, but you are not hitting your ROAS goal, not even close. What do you do? Do you change the bid strategy? If so, to what? Or do you keep the current bid strategy?

So to recap, Maximize Conversion Value, hitting our CPA goal, meaning our cost per conversion is acceptable, but ROAS is not. So the incremental value of each conversion is too low.

To fix a ROAS issue, we either need to fix the numerator or the denominator, right? ROAS is revenue / cost, so to increase ROAS, we need more revenue, or less cost, or both. 

I usually start with the top of that, with increasing revenue first. Since we are hitting our CPA goal, it's likely not a conversion rate issue, and that means it's likely an Average order value (AOV) issue. 

We're getting the right number of conversions, but we're just not making enough money on those conversions. So I would look at the products and services that we're selling, about 28 each month, 28 conversions a month. Is there an opportunity to upsell, to cross-sell, to add a post-checkout upsell? Am I advertising the right products or services with my keywords? The Maximize Conversion Value bid strategy should take care of that part on its own, but with only 28 conversions a month, there just might not be enough data to figure out the best search terms for my business or the best audiences for my business. So I can help by narrowing down the pool of available options. That also means potentially fewer audiences or fewer keywords or adding negatives or exclusions. 

If you need a primer, by the way, on increasing AOV, it's one of the four pillars of my growth formula, and I teach a whole workshop about it in my course, The Solo Growth Accelerator. That's my course that has nothing to do with Google Ads, and you can learn more about it at learn.jyll.ca. 

But back to ROAS, we can increase revenue or decrease cost. So to decrease cost, that's something that Maximize bid strategies are not good at. Since we are hitting our CPA goal, I would consider testing a Target CPA bid strategy. Even though the goal is higher ROAS, Target CPA could help me decrease cost, which in turn could increase ROAS, if revenue can stay flat as cost decreases. 

Other options to decrease costs would be what I mentioned above with a slightly different spin: evaluating our targeting. Are there really expensive keywords or placements or audiences that we might want to exclude? Am I using frequency capping or household income exclusions, for example, things that narrow my reach but can also really drive up my CPCs? 

Depending on the budget levels we're talking about, I would actually try both these options together. Yes, I would change my bid strategy, probably to Target CPA. In addition, I would work on increasing AOV, mostly through “outside the Google Ads account” optimizations around the website and checkout flow. 

What do you think? Would you consider the same things or something different? 

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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