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Google’s Ecosystem: Google Ads

Until recently, Google Ads was known as AdWords and is often mistakenly referred to as PPC. Google Ads is the central advertising platform that enables you to run key direct response advertising. This includes Pay Per Click (PPC), Google Shopping, GDN (Google Display Network) and YouTube Advertising.

Are Google Ads the same as PPC?

In short, no. PPC is one format out of a range of Google Ads products. It is well known and often confused because it was one of the first formats available when google started to roll our paid search.

Creating successful campaigns through Google Ads is an art as much as it is a science. It requires the creativity to compose compelling online adverts, and analytical mind to make sure they appear in the right places and deep strategic and user experience knowledge to create landing pages that guide conversion.

Integrated Analytics

Google Ads also integrates with other products such as Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Google Search Console & Google Merchant Centre. These platforms enable the creation of specific audiences for remarketing, product data feeds and more granular e-commerce attribution.

Scalable Budgets

We’re used to working with budgets of all sizes to deliver results. The beauty of Google Ads is that the production cost is relatively low and they can be switched off or scaled up at short notice. We do recommend, as with all digital marketing that you try to keep it consistent.

Key Google Ads formats

PPC

PPC is short for Pay-Per-Click; text adverts that are visible for relevant, pre-agreed search terms or keywords and you only pay the media cost if someone clicks on the ad. This format is particularly useful for service-based businesses. This search tactic gives you a lot of control on what you are visible for but it must be consistently optimised from a copy-writing and bid-management perspective in order to remain cost-efficient and effective.

Youtube Advertising

YouTube established itself as the leading video content website in 2005. Combined with the soaring popularity of video content due to other social media platforms and consumer expectation from brands & influencers to produce video content. Youtube is now the second-largest search engine behind its parent company Google and data sharing between the platforms allows for highly targeted video content.

Google Shopping

Google shopping is a great search marketing tactic for e-commerce businesses. It works in a similar way to PPC, except there is a photo of your product instead of text. Unlike PPC, visibility is not guided by specific keywords or search terms. Instead, the relevancy of your product is decided by Google based on how your product has been categorised and set up in a platform called Google Merchant Centre.

Google Display Network (GDN)

The Google Display Network (GDN) is an advertising network that enables you to reach over 2 millions users with targeted display advertising. You can target based on interests, demographic or e-commerce stage using remarketing audience. The platform works by website owners ‘selling’ space on their sites which advertising networks buy, from here to serve adverts to the visitors to those websites.

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