Overview
What is Google Ads?
Google Ads (formerly AdWords) is Google's pay-per-click online advertising program. With Google Ads users set their budget and choose where their ads appear in search listings, and on partner websites. Google Ads uses cost-per-click (CPC) bidding.
Ad Management with Google Ads
Google Ads Problems
Best Ads Campaign Tool.
I've wasted thousands of dollars on useless clicks (thanks to the advice of my 'Campaign Manager')
Google Ads - If you aren't using Google Ads, your business is missing a huge opportunity!
Google Ads - An Awesome, Scalable Marketing Solution
Google Ads- maximize your reach!
Google Ads = ROAS
Best paid search management tools via the Google Ads platform
Worst customer service ever!
Disappointed with Google Ads
Google ads - A Place where most expectations becomes reality
SAVE YOUR MONEY THEY ARE A SCAM
Google Ads is Complicated and Has Zero ROI
Awards
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Reviewer Pros & Cons
Pricing
What is Google Ads?
Google Ads (formerly AdWords) is Google's pay-per-click online advertising program. With Google Ads users set their budget and choose where their ads appear in search listings, and on partner websites. Google Ads uses cost-per-click (CPC) bidding.
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Demos
5 Minutes Guide: How to Setup Google Ads Account [2021]
How to create Google Ads Tracking Template URL with example? Campaign URL Option in Google Ads 2021
Upload to AdWords (Demo)
Google Analytics tutorial for Beginners
Google Web Designer for Google Ads Demo
Quick Start Guide To Google Ads For Beginners: Create Your First Campaign In 20 Minutes
Product Details
- About
- Integrations
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is Google Ads?
Google Ads Integrations
Google Ads Technical Details
Operating Systems | Unspecified |
---|---|
Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
Comparisons
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Reviews and Ratings
(1286)Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-25 of 54)Google Ads Problems
- Not telling the truth about giving a customer $$$ after they spend so much on ads
- Not having good intentions to give you credit when they make mistakes
- Not being accountable when they clearly mess up
- Not connecting you to a person higher up to discuss your problems
- The specialist was so busy and rushed and he did my campaigns, as a result I ended up paying for my competitor's advertisement. Google never gave me a credit for their mistake.
- If they want to be in the business of advertising, they need to get to know their customers and their businesses. I don't mean like an algorithm but really know them.
- Google has to stand behind their work and be compatible. Most my other advertisers have a system that if I don't get to my minimum goal, they do a good faith effort to give you credit for the next round.
- Google is all about money. They could care less if your ads work or not.
Best Ads Campaign Tool.
- Target High Intent Audience.
- Easy to use.
- Relevant tool for marketers.
- Reporting is on point.
- Error resolution could be easier.
- Support centre is not approachable.
- Access Management is complex.
Google Ads = ROAS
- Reaching new customers
- Easy to use platform
- Good ROAS
- You can only have one draft campaign at a time
- Certain functions are hard to find (setting monthly budget)
- The recommendations can be better, ie keyword suggestions are not always relevant
- Paid search (PPC) campaign management
- Keyword planning and analysis
- App install campaigns
- Google shopping campaigns for direct response
- Advertising on YouTube
- Bid and budget management
- Conversion tracking
- Lack of hands-on customer support and dedicated account management resources
- Google automatically turns campaigns on - they should make it easier to set launch dates in the future
- Doesn't integrate well with third-party technology platforms
SAVE YOUR MONEY THEY ARE A SCAM
- STEAL YOUR MONEY
- SUSPEND YOUR ACCOUNT FOR NO REASON
- HANG UP ON YOU WHEN YOU NEED HELP
- WILL NOT LET YOU SPEAK TO A PERSON
- TELL YOU TO WASTE 2 HRS TO KEEP SENDING EMAILS TO THIER ROBOT SO THEY CAN SEND THE SAME EMAIL STATING THEY CANT HELP
- FRAUD
- HORRIBLE CUSTOMER SERVICE
- THE ENTIRE COMPANY
- Provides real-time data on insights.
- Easy to create ads.
- Ability to easily learn with online platforms.
- Updates on when your budget is close to stopping.
- Ability to add more characters.
- Easier ability to monitor quick changes.
One of the best forms of advertising online
- Relevant ads upon search
- Audience targeting
- Keyword research
- Ad campaign versatility
- Keyword tool could be better
- Traffic estimates
- Automated targeting via Smart Shopping campaign. It's one of the best campaign types in Google Ads. In the beginning, you may see lower revenue and ROAS, but once you give some meaningful time to your campaign, it is most likely to perform well.
- Smart bidding strategies: Google Ads has developed some really great bidding strategies such as maximizing conversion and maximizing conversion with ROAS settings. Based on one's requirement and their goal with revenue and target ROAS, they can choose the appropriate bidding strategy.
- Reporting: A business owner and advertising must know about their audiences, how their campaigns have been performing, what's working and what's not, and for that reason, powerful, effective reporting is needed, and Google Ads provides rich details reporting that covers almost every aspect of a business.
- Display network: I think it's the area where Google Ads really lacks. Most of the time, I don't see display campaigns performing. Maybe they need to look into it and get rid of spam websites over Adsense.
- Less control over smart shopping: Even though smart shopping usually performs well, it gives very low control for a user on it. We can't even see what's working inside a campaign, what audiences are performing well, and no search term report available.
- Google Ads App for Android and iOS also lacks most functionalities and needs strong improvement.
Best Way to Increase Website Traffic
- Run various types of Ad campaigns.
- Increases leads, sales, and traffic.
- Variety of features.
- Suggestions many times aren't relevant.
- Not as efficient as it could be.
- Rejections on Ad campaigns.
AdWords - A Search Perspective
Overall, AdWords solves many problems, these include but are not limited to, low organic search rankings, finding new customers, driving more users to your site, as well as allowing the business in question to increase their overall revenue.
- AdWords utilizes audience lists very well. These are lists that are created either with cookies, first-party data (from the business) or by using Google's own created topics. Audience lists are a strength mainly because it allows the business to target users who are more relevant to them, this, firstly, reduces spend on less relevant users and also increases revenue and conversions, which can really help a business grow.
- AdWords also circumvents the problem regarding low organic search rankings.
- For many businesses, organic search rankings could be very low for many non-brand related terms. AdWords gets around this by allowing you to bid on the first 4 positions on the search results page. This is essential to increase the visibility of the business, as well as allowing you the choice to bid on certain terms.
- AdWords also provides Ad Extensions, these are extensions to your usual PPC ads and allows you to add additional information that you may not be able to fit into the character limit. The ad extensions include sitelinks (links that take you to various pages on your site), callouts (a list of unique selling points that will entice the user to click), Call extensions (a phone number).
- These extensions allow your business to firstly take up more space when the advert is shown on the results page, which takes attention away from competitors and thus, vastly increases the likelihood of a user clicking on your ad. These extensions would not always be available if you run your business using SEO only.
- AdWords editor doesn't allow for the editing of Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) campaigns. I would like for this to be changed, as I prefer to see my changes before they go live, however for DSAs you are unable to do this and all changes have to occur live in the account.
- I would like to see a functionality that allows you to apply an audience list to a device, without the need to create a separate device-specific campaign. This would be beneficial if you see a certain type of user is more likely to click on a specific device.
- I would like to see the user interface to change slightly to allow for more visibility of overall performance in a graph. This could be done by setting primary and secondary KPIs in the account and then these could be displayed on a top-level chart. The idea of this is to see where drops and peaks occur and where you could investigate it more.
I think AdWords is less suited when it comes to a branding piece if you are trying to give your business more exposure in the public eye. This could work as support to other channels, such as out of the home, or paid social.
A Great ROI for PPC Marketing
- Target Marketing
- Ease of Creating PPC Ads
- Great Reporting Features
- If you don't know what you're doing, it will be a costly mistake. You need to target ads, and it is difficult the first time to do that.
- There isn't a feature to run an add for a couple set date spans, just hours you want to run them or a single date span.
Google is suited to showcase your website
- Drive traffic
- Keyword research
- Campaign analytics
- Smart bidding
- Conversions
- Smart bidding audience adjustments
- Smart bidding bid adjustments
- Distinguish between new and existing potential leads
- Reporting Dashboard
- Ad Setup Wizard
- Geographic Targeting
- Keyword Pricing
- Reporting Dashboard Organization
A Quick Review of Google Ads
- Options. It gives you plenty of ways to customize and build your ads as you wish (obviously within their parameters).
- User Functionality. While it would be burdensome (see weaknesses) for some, if you are familiar with these types of programs then you will be able to navigate around Google Ads pretty easily.
- Budget Friendly. You can set your own budget. That, in and of itself, is key for us.
- Support. Almost every account rep we've had has been a bully. They've harassed our employees to get to me, all to tell me that they think I need to raise my budget (mind you, as a school we aren't able to simply raise a budget just because someone thinks we should). In another instance, an account rep was claiming to help us (this was several years ago), and made changes on the ads - they ended up making the ads for something we were not affiliated with.
- Not for Beginners. Many marketing companies use the expansive display as a way to stymie clients, making it seem like the overview is more complicated than it seems. If you are new to the program, you will be fooled. Be mindful that this facet of Google Ads allows for manipulation.
Just be mindful that the representatives are there to raise your budget, first and foremost. Most marketing companies will go out of their way to confuse you by downloading the Overview and making it seem like they put in hours of work, especially if it nets them profit. Many industries just need someone to train an in-house person to handle the ads (which is also better because then you can avoid the third party not fully knowing your brand). Once you get it, you get it.
Google AdWords
- A strong audience
- An easy to use UI
- A great value proposition for clients
- Many targeting capabilities
- Could use some help in the ad builder, it would be great to have examples of ad copy to use.
- The set up is easy, but it is a long process from start to finish.
Google Ads Review
- It is probably the best methods for reaching out to prospects, BUT sadly we have no other choice due to GOOGLE's monopoly as a research engine in western nations.
- Ergonomic interface
- Easy to setup an account
- A support team that is rude and unaware how their processes work
- They didn't know that google ads requires your payment details to sign up
- They don't know how a campaign is set up
- They conned me with the free voucher
- They automatically started a campaign for me, billed me 128 euros and don't know how to activate the voucher on this bill, even if the voucher has been granted.
- They need to fuse : Google ads, google mybusiness and google analytics, so many accounts to create if you are a company
Beware at the beginning ! When signing up, they require payment details.
Beware when trying to request a voucher "to try" a google ad campaign, they launch it without validation (maybe a mistake on my behalf, but unlikely i would validate a campaign with my website not ready. Now they are not able to tell if i can redeem the voucher on my total bill ! Absurd! Then they tell me, "our email must be in your SPAM" . You are sending an email from google ads to a gmail?! How can you not rectify this !? Sorry, don't really have a good point for them, except google ads is only suited to you if you are in the right sectors and your clients have the good demographics
Please read before your use Google Ads Review...If you want to lose money don't read.
- Google Ads is too good to take your money away, It is very easy to spend tons of money within hours, without any result.
- Easy to setup a campaign and lose your money
- There is no easy option to get refund of the fake/fraud clicks.
- Google can block all bot clicks or competitor's click on Google search, but it will not, because it will lose revenue
- Too fast, too many changes in features and too many experiments in Google Ads, simply to waste the money of customers.
- It is definitely game played by Google without considering the results and return of investment by their customers. Google is simply interested in the money
- It is surely not useful for small and mid size companies
- If you are looking for good ROI, come up with other Ad platform, do not use Google
- DO NOT TRUST the marketing agency and insist on ROI
- Google Ads forces to get too many fake clicks from Mobile platform, even though I want to focus only on Desktop platform.
- DO not click on their recommendation or suggestion, It is a sure shot way to lose all your hard earned money.
- Their recommendation will only waste your money, without any results.
Not for small businesses; dishonest promotion
- It has detailed tracking tools.
- There is an app so you can monitor progress on your mobile.
- You can customize settings to view stats most important to you.
- Transparency and clarity of terms and conditions, especially for new customers.
- Making the web interface more intuitive for new users.
- Enable specific audience targeting in Smart Campaigns (this is done exceptionally well in Instagram ads).
- Differentiate how Smart Campaigns are run by business size and category.
The promotion is a $150 credit for new users but the terms are vague and misleading. It should more clearly state that the credit will only apply towards a second campaign and that new users will have to pay for their first ad out of pocket. Since the promotion targets new customers it's obvious that many won't fully understand the process. I found out once the promotion completed and I saw an unexpected charge for the full cost of the campaign.
Like many other companies, Google is capitalizing on the pandemic and targeting businesses that are struggling and looking to earn new customers. Small businesses are particularly vulnerable due to limited knowledge of ad campaigns and a lack of funds. Perhaps Google Ads is far better suited to larger, more established businesses with experience running ads, a well-defined audience and the ability to spend on multiple campaigns.
Not Suitable for Small Business
- Charging your credit card
- Ignoring your requests for help
- Sending automated messages when you ask for help
- Customer Service in the support department.
- Allowing people to speak to human beings that are actually there to assist you when there are issues with your account.
- Directing your ads locally.
- Costs a lot to get it to begin to show progress.
- Lots of rules that a layman would never understand. Their resolution for that is a web page utilizing ad language that never actually helps you resolve the issue. When you attempt to reach someone for help they redirect you to a website and state that all you can do is reach them by email. Then rather than answering your questions, they send the same response to you over and over and the problem is never resolved.
- Uses a platform that you feel you are stuck using because they are so well known.
Beware before using Google Ads formerly Google Adwords
So I canceled. Fast forward approximately a year later, I find out that Google Ads, which it is now apparently called, had been charging one of my rarely used credit card accounts for 3 months! Even more so, the account they charged was NOT the account that I had even used back then. They somehow, without authorization, acquired it and proceeded to charge me month after month for a bogus campaign I had absolutely no part of!! What a nightmare. Beware. And they to this date, refuse to delete the campaign so that it doesn't happen again.
- It could help people find your business.
- If you have unlimited funds and time, it could be a good tool to obtaining leads.
- Many leads came from way outside the acceptable geographic radius
- You must pay for those clicks, calls, etc.
- The program (ad campaign) has a major glitch so beware, I was charged for a campaign that I never created
- It is difficult to stop the campaign once created.
- You can only "pause" a campaign. There is no option to delete a campaign.
- This is problematic because somehow, these campaigns will start on their own, meanwhile without knowing, you are racking up tons of charges for leads that you never had any interaction with
A Must-Do Marketing Tactic for Google Search
- Helpful Resources - Given how long Google Ads has been around, there are a lot of resources you can tap into to get started and create high-performing campaigns
- Easy to Set up - Overall it is easy to set up and get started with Google Ads
- In-Depth Reporting - Google Ads has some very in-depth reporting capabilities. It can be overwhelming at first, but once you understand the reports you can find some really actionable information
- Google Ads can get really pricey really quickly. You need to monitor the account and really think about ways to optimize your spend
- Best practices are not intuitive. Although getting started is really easy, it is not intuitive to follow best practices. Going to a class (in person or online) can be very beneficial.
Google Ads - the dominant platform in Search
- Allows for accurate budget spend on Pay per click advertising
- Allows for easy management of client's accounts
- Allows for targeted advertising in the digital space by focusing on Geography, Demographics, in market buyers and other types of parameters depending on the objectives of the advertising campaigns
- Unfortunately, customer support has fallen by the wayside since Google has gone public. It is now outsourced to a foreign country where command of English is an issue as well as limited understanding of the Google Ads platform.
- The platform was upgraded recently and now performs slower than it used to. This may not be an issue if you don't manage your account often, but larger accounts with higher budgets will spend more time on the platform performing the same tasks.
- The Help Files need better organization and updating. A lot of the Help files are still showing how to operate in the old platform and need updating. The Help files also have a tendency to be too broad and not focused on one task or section of Google Ads. Finding answers to your questions can take a bit of time.
A must have PPC channel for modern marketing teams
- Keyword targeting
- Analytics
- Ad attribution
- Retargeting is a little complicated and it shouldn't need to be
- More options for display targeting
- Currently doesn't have a built in tool to build display creatives
- Reaching my client's different buyer personas by using specific keywords and other types of segmentation.
- Creating an online presence through different types of ads.
- Increasing traffic to my client's websites.
- Acquiring leads for my client's businesses.
- Find competitors I didn't know about by analyzing the impression share from the keywords we are using.
- Sometimes it takes a long time to load the page, which can make me grow impatient.
- Some features are not available in markets such as in Mexico. Some of them would be useful, mainly for shopping campaigns.
- Sometimes setting up a shopping campaign can be difficult due to linking and approvals from the merchant center.
Google Ads Much to My Business!
- Google Ads is more affordable than other advertising options like radio or television, and allows us to tailor our ads to specific audiences interests.
- The Google Ad campaign was easy to set up and run.
- Ad tracking aids in optimizing your campaign while in motion to reduce your CPC and increase your conversions
- Google only allows you to run one credit card at a time.
- The trickiest thing about Google Ads is getting started if you are a beginner.
- The platform gives you a lot of information in terms of how your ads are performing.