Inside Google Ads podcast: Episode 98 - Awareness

Which Google Ads strategy is best for building awareness?

Should you start with a Search campaign, the bread and butter of Google Ads? Or should you start with something like Display or Video that can give you a much wider reach more cheaply? What bid strategy should you use? How should you target your ads? 

Let's answer your questions about building brand awareness in Google Ads.

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 98, Awareness. 

Our first question comes from Daniel_xv on Instagram, and they say, What bidding strategy do you think is better for mass awareness? 

When we need to pick a bidding strategy, we need to start by deciding how we'll measure the success of our ads. So if our goal is awareness, genuinely awareness, then that means the way we're going to measure success is impressions and reach. In Google Ads reach is called “Unique Users.” That's a column you can add to your report. 

So while you can't bid specifically for unique users, you can bid for impressions. There are three different impression-based bid strategies in Google Ads, depending what kind of campaign you're running.

For a Search campaign, your bid strategy would be Target Impression Share. And this aims to get you a certain share of impressions, right? A certain visual real estate on the search engine results page.

In a Video campaign, you would choose a Video Reach campaign and your bid strategy would be Target CPM. Remember, CPM means cost per mille or cost per thousand impressions. The target CPM bid strategy optimizes for unique reach for your Video campaign, so reaching as many unique people as possible.

In a Display campaign, your option would be Viewable CPM. And the way this is different from Target CPM is Viewable CPM is more like a manual bid strategy. You set the maximum amount you're willing to pay per thousand impressions. Whereas, with Video with Target CPM, you're setting your target, your desired average CPM, and then Google could bid above or below, but will look to average out at your target while optimizing for unique reach.

So those are your three actual awareness-based bid strategies: Target Impression Share for Search, Target CPM for Video, and Viewable CPM for Display. But there are two more bid strategies I think you should actually consider, even if the goal is awareness. 

First, Demand Gen. There is not actually an awareness-based bid strategy for Demand Gen, because Demand Gen is supposed to be more mid-funnel to bottom-of-funnel. But I think that's kind of garbage. You can absolutely use Demand Gen campaigns to generate demand! I recommend choosing the Maximize Clicks strategy. This ensures that you're showing ads to people on YouTube, Discover, and Gmail, and if they click, meaning they leave whatever it is they were doing and visit your website, then that's great. Technically, that's more consideration than awareness, but a really great option for advertisers with an awareness goal who want to run Demand Gen.

In Video, although Video Reach campaigns are an option, I generally prefer Video View campaigns with a Target CPV bid strategy. This optimizes for people actually viewing your ad rather than the ad just showing up in front of people. 

The reasons I prefer that are first, just because you show an ad in front of someone, it doesn't mean they are interested - if they view the ad, that's more engaging. And second, you can only remarket to people who actually view your ads. So if you run a Video Reach campaign, you cannot build a remarketing list of people who are served your video ads because an impression is not a view. If you run a Video Views campaign, then you can build a remarketing list of people who chose to view your ads and then show ads to them again later in other campaign types or target or observe that list in Search. There's just a lot more possibilities.

So although not technically awareness, it is also definitely not a conversion focused bid strategy. I would recommend Maximize Clicks in Demand Gen, or maybe in Search, and then a Video Views campaign on Target CPV rather than Video Reach on Target CPM.

If you want to know more about all 12 bid strategies available in Google Ads I cover them in detail on Episode 77 of the Inside Google Ads podcast. You'll find that link in the episode description.

Before we get to our next question, we are nearing 100 weekly episodes of Inside Google Ads. Can you believe it? 

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Thank you so much for tuning in to Inside Google Ads every Thursday for 98 episodes and counting!

Our next question comes from Bhavin Parmar on YouTube and they say, do you think Display is not useful even in an awareness campaign for a local services business using keywords and similar site visitor audiences? 

Let's break down this question bit by bit. 

I generally say that I hate Display campaigns and I still pretty much stand by that, just because there are much better options in Google Ads like Demand Gen or Video. So for a local services business, that's what I would recommend instead. Or of course, local services ads, if you're eligible.

Now, interestingly, the two audience types you mentioned here don't actually work with Display anyway. A keyword-based audience, meaning a custom segment built on search terms, does not work as intended in a Display campaign. You have to use that in Demand Gen or Video, on Google-owned properties only. 

And similarly, for similar site visitor audiences, I believe by that you mean a Lookalike segment, and that is only available in Demand Gen. Google has announced it's coming to Video campaigns, but that's also not available in Display.

So what kind of targeting and campaign type should you actually use for your awareness campaigns?

I tend to prefer at least starting with Google-owned properties via a Demand Gen campaign set to Maximize Clicks.

For targeting, I do think a search-based custom segment is a great place to start. And then in-market audiences can also be really helpful. It's still awareness, because you're reaching people who are not familiar with your business, but those are going to be much smaller than your really broad demographics or affinities.

I actually don't tend to use Lookalikes that much. I find that they're not very effective for smaller local businesses, but you're welcome to try it out. I do recommend using your customer list as the seed list for a Lookalike, because anything broader than that is probably not going to be a strong enough signal for Google or for you.

All of those targeting tactics I mentioned would also work in a Video campaign. But of course, that means you need video creative, which I know can be a big challenge for small local businesses. In Demand Gen, you can run video, but you can also just use image ads. And I would say the vast majority of my Google Ads coaching clients who are either agencies serving small local businesses, or are the local business owners themselves, tend to just use image-based Demand Gen.

By the way, if you're feeling a little lost by some of the words I'm throwing out here, like Demand Gen, Display, Video, Local Services Ads, I cover all of this in my Inside Google Ads course. You can learn more and join at learn.jyll.ca, that's J-Y-L-L dot C-A, or follow the link in the episode description.

Our final question today comes from Yhlbill on TikTok and they say, should YouTube ads be more like a TV commercial?

And the answer is actually… not so much. The kinds of videos that tend to work well on YouTube are quite different from the kinds of videos that would work well in a classic TV commercial.

There's a framework that YouTube has put out to tell you exactly how to think about creating effective video ads, and it's called ABCD. 

The A stands for attention. You want to grab attention early. Whereas in a traditional TV commercial, you have time to kind of build slowly to the climax at the end. On YouTube, it's the opposite. You have to grab attention right away. Otherwise, they're going to skip your ad. So grab attention early.

Then B stands for brand early and often. You want to make sure that the people in your video are actually saying the name of your brand early, that your brand colors are throughout. Maybe your brand logo is shown. If there are noises or other things associated with your brand, use those in the video. Remember, depending what kind of video campaign you're running, you might only be paying for a view, and so your ad could show to a lot of people that you don't even have to pay for. Take advantage of the branding opportunity by ensuring your brand shows up in those all-important first six seconds.

The C stands for connect. You want to create a connection with the viewer through an emotion. It can be any emotion, but you want to make them feel something: happy, sad, encouraged, optimistic, even fearful. You don't need to have high production value, but even at a low low budget, like something you shot on your phone and posted on YouTube, you want to make sure that you're making the audience feel something so that they'll remember your brand and associate it with that feeling.

And then finally, D is direct. You want to direct them to take action by the end of your video, by literally saying or showing what you want them to do next. For example, you could even show someone looking up your brand on Google. That's a great way to direct them to action.

To learn more about the ABCDs, I recommend Googling “YouTube ABCD framework,” because if you forget the “framework” part and just search “YouTube ABCDs,” you're going to find the alphabet song for babies. Ask me how I know!

Last but not least, if you want some inspiration for YouTube ads, I recommend going to the Google Ads Transparency Center. And I know you want to look up your competitors, but instead, try to look up some of your favourite brands that you like to shop at and see what their video ads look like. Look at ads in complementary industries, maybe products that are not competitive with yours but that target the same audience you would target.

In a Video campaign, I do think your creative is even more important than your bidding and your targeting. And of course, don't forget about the thumbnail! One of the key YouTube ad placements is the in-feed placement, and people don't even see your video there unless they choose to click on it, and your thumbnail is a huge determinant of whether or not they choose to click on it.

For more about different options to promote your YouTube video, you should check out Episode 78 of this podcast. The link is also in the episode description.

To wrap up today, yes, you can build awareness with Google Ads, but be honest with yourself. Are you actually going to measure the success of your Google Ads investment by the number of unique users? Are you actually going to look at that impressions number and say, “Yep, job well done”?

Or are you going to be sneaking a peek at the CPA or the ROAS or the conversion rate?

I’ve worked with hundreds of different clients in my time at Google and as a Google Ads coach, and I've only ever had one that genuinely just cared about awareness, regardless of what they said initially. And you know what? They ended up stopping running Google Ads because impressions there were more expensive than on other platforms like TikTok.

But when it comes to conversions and business value, Google Ads with its database of intent is hard to beat.

Today's Insider Challenge is this. Let's say you've just taken on a new client and they say they want to build brand awareness. So you build the Google Ads strategy accordingly. And then at your first monthly check-in, the client is not happy because the CPCs are higher than they expected. How do you respond? 

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.

The Last Episode where we had a challenge was Episode 95, and it was this. Let's say that you look at the audience insights for your Search campaign, and the top audience segment is exactly what you'd expect, perfectly aligned with your search terms, a high share of conversions, and high audience index. What do you do next, if anything? 

My answer is first, clap my hands and smile. Job well done!

And then if our Search Impression Share is maybe like 30% or higher and we have more money to spend, I might consider launching a Demand Gen campaign targeting that audience to expand our reach.

Otherwise, I would leave it be. We love a campaign that's perfectly hitting our target audience, so let's let it keep doing that. 

What about you? Would you do the same or something different? 

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