Adwords Creatives
Creative or ads are the visible result of running a PPC campaign in Adwords. When you search for something on Google you are more than likely to see an ad in the spaces reserved for them in the top and right of the results page as shown in the image below.
The benefit of these ads is that they do not need to only appear on search terms specifically related to your website. For example if you wanted to do some competitor advertising you could have your Ad appear when someone searches for your top competitor. The ad would be allowed as long as you aren’t using someone else’s trademarked brand name in the text.
Text ad Length Requirements
The text ad which is the main form of advertising used by Adwords on the Google Search Engine is split into four areas. Headline, Description Line 1, Description Line 2 and Display URL.
Headline: The headline is the first section that a user generally sees and it is limited to a total of 25 characters. This should be taken up by the name of your business and if there is space to mention if there is a special offer or sale happening at the time.
Description Line 1 and 2: This is the body of the ad and is used to talk about the specific offering that is available or to describe what products are being promoted. Description line 1 has a maximum limit of 35 characters and this is the same for Description Line 2.
Display URL: The display URL is not the real URL of the website. This can be used as an additional description of what the service the Ad is talking about however it does need to use the same domain of the site that the Ad is directing traffic to. An example of this would be www.webafrica.co.za/Cheap_ADSL and the real URL for the landing page is http://www.webafrica.co.za/adsl/ this allows for the look of a landing page URL but with additional offer or product messaging.
Ad Copy Relevancy
One thing that is quite important when writing the copy for your ads is to think about relevancy. If for example someone is search for pizza, you don’t want to have your ad talking about books because the person searching isn’t likely to click on it and if they do then they are not very likely to interact on your site in an engaged way.
Other forms of advertising can generally be more successful when you are looking at promoting interest in a brand when the customer has no idea about the product before such as TV advertising where the ads you see are tailored for the audience but very rarely have anything to do with the show you are watching. Search is different because the user is already searching and you need to make sure that the ads you are showing him or her are related to the search terms that have been typed into Google.
Ad copy relevancy is not only important for the success of your ad campaign but it is also made important by Google since it has an impact on the cost of your CPC’s (Cost per Click). This is done through what is called quality score. Google assigns a number from one to 10 to each of your keywords, if you have a quality score of 10 then your ads will get shown more often and cost less but if you have a quality score of two for example then your CPC’s will be more expensive and your ad’s will automatically be shown less. This is Google’s way of rewarding advertisers who provide users with relevant ads.
In my next blog post I’ll talk about quality score in more detail. How to get a higher one and what the factors that influence it are.
1 : An Introduction to Paid Search Traffic and Adwords
