Google Ads - Supporting Community-Based-Organizations via the Google Ads 501(c)(3) Grant Program
Google Ads offers all eligible 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations the annual grant credit amounting to a maximum of $120,000 of …
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.
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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.
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5 Minutes Guide: How to Setup Google Ads Account [2021]
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How to create Google Ads Tracking Template URL with example? Campaign URL Option in Google Ads 2021
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Quick Start Guide To Google Ads For Beginners: Create Your First Campaign In 20 Minutes
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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. There's no minimum spending commitment, and the program can be paused or stopped at anytime. With Google Ads the user reaches people as they search for words or phrases as they browse websites. Ads can appear in Google search listings and on partner websites. Remarketing and retargeting techniques can be applied to increase return traffic and make sales. With cost-per-click (CPC) bidding, Google Ads charges users when visitors click on ads.
Google Ads Integrations
Google Ads Technical Details
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
|---|---|
| Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
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.
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The most common users of Google Ads are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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September 03, 2021
AdWords - A Search Perspective
- 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.
August 27, 2021
Google Ads - Like taxes, hate using but you have to
- It’s Google so everybody uses it.
- You can lose as much money as you want and have full control over the speed in which you lose money.
- When there is an issue you get the pleasure of chatting with an AI bot who will repeatedly email you the same auto-response with links to policies, no matter what question you ask it!
- If you make a mistake and accidentally talk to a real human they will quickly route you to the correct bot to send you repeated and useless emails.
- [I believe] regardless of any government and legal requirements to start and run a business, Google will determine if you are allowed to have customers.
- Customer service is non-existent, unless you’re maybe spending millions.
- No visibility to ad delivery. You simply must trust that your ads are targeting your customer profile.
- You’ll likely get flagged as some type of scam and have your account suspended, while you also get bombarded with actual scams.
August 23, 2021
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.
- Data collection. Not in the sense of privacy, but in terms of numbers it gives owners or of the accounts an immense amount of data to use for the management of the campaigns.
- Integrations. For the most part, you can find ways to integrate Google Ads with other digital platforms in order to ensure that you are collecting the right information.
- Provides multiple types of campaign options for different campaign objectives.
- The user interface is too gimmicky at times and does not cater to the more experienced user.
- If you are inexperienced, they do not do a good job of explaining how the system works and try to push you to automation, which can lead you down a bad path. If you do not know what to look for then you can find yourself in trouble and may spend a lot of money thinking you are doing a good job.
July 06, 2021
Google Ads comes highly recommended
- Search traffic
- Management of budgets and bids
- Control over delivery
- Service team
- Analysis reporting team
- Revenue management
July 01, 2021
Google Ads is best in class for search ads
- Google Ads is the best in class at search ads.
- The setup of their campaigns is relatively simple, and their support is decent.
- They have a big display ad network as well, although display campaign management can be difficult.
- Google's heavy dependence on AI makes many of the campaign behavior inscrutable and, often, it performs poorly as a result.
- Their responsive ads, for example, which are heavily recommended by them, often perform significantly worse than normal text ads.
- Their support, while relatively quick, becomes useless if you need any deep insight/help.
June 28, 2021
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
- Easy to use - possible to create a campaign within minutes.
- It has broad audience and millions of users.
- Relatively simple interface.
- It takes 2 weeks for a campaign to optimize itself.
- The system is over engineered from a security perspective - there are many false positives.
- High cost - higher than Facebook Ads.
- Reporting Dashboard
- Ad Setup Wizard
- Geographic Targeting
- Keyword Pricing
- Reporting Dashboard Organization
May 13, 2021
Increase website traffic with Google Ads
- Making it easy to create and publish the ads
- Helps with budget and timing
- Product support is great!
- Suggested keywords based on previous content
- Help with ad timing and imaging
- Better detailed explanation of ideas
May 12, 2021
Solid Google Ads manager
- Create and manage advertisements on Google
- Provide keyword and ad planning tools
- Provide data on search traffic and queries
- UI is sluggish and buggy at times
- Optimization/recommendation tool has to be continuously monitored and recommendations have to be dismissed multiple times
- Google has started limiting search query report tool and hiding low traffic search terms
- Keyword Research - Google Ads has a handy built in tool that helps determine important keywords to target both for Ads & SEO
- Intuitive Analytics Dashboad - Google Ads makes it fairly simple to see and analyze important metrics on how your ads are running week after week
- Intuitive Setup - Google Ads makes it easy to figure out how to run ads with little to no training (although training is highly recommended to run effective ads), as their interface is clean and easy to figure out (unlike competing products).
- Google Ads allows you to make and manage multiple ads accounts; the downfall being that if you ever click "New Ads Account", that accidental account can seemingly never be deleted/removed from your login page.
- Google Ads offers two separate dashboard views - "Summary" and "Detailed". Both are useful, however summary seemingly removes 3/4 of the features I frequently use. This only became an issue however when Google Ads first decided to change me to "Summary" view without asking my permission or informing me how to return to the "Detailed" view.
- No matter what kind of Ads account you setup (using the non-profit grant or not), you get the exact same Google Ads account - with all the features. For non-profits under the grant, this means you have to be careful not to test that cool new feature Google is promoting that will immediately disqualify you from the grant.
- Google Ads tries to make things simple by giving you suggestions, and will sometimes penalize you if you ignore their suggestions. The issue is when their suggestion is to add misspelled words and improper grammar into your ads - which, if you ignore, decreases your optimization score, and comes back no matter how many times it is reported.
April 14, 2021
Essentially no substitute for Search Engine Marketing
- Automatic Ad Creation
- Machine Learning-based refinement
- Keyword Research
- Performance Planning
- Display Advertising
- Search Advertising
- Search Term refinement
- Reporting is powerful but clunky
- Budget Management leaves a lot to be desired (no monthly maximum spend option)
- Recommendations are almost always trying to increase budget
- Quarterly Google Ads techs are often less experienced than average user
- Appeal Process is very vague and doesn't allow for explanations
April 14, 2021
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.
April 09, 2021
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.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- Finely tuned messaging
- Real-time analytics
- Ability to quickly react and adjust ads to industry trends
- Typically more expensive than some ad channels such as Facebook
- Algorithms are constantly updated with major affects to current campaigns
- Some ads are disapproved for unforeseen reasons
March 25, 2021
Google Ads Review
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- 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
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- Google Ads lures in new clients with great front-loaded discounts/credits.
- Service representatives are slick with unrealistic goals for small businesses.
- Google is world renowned and one would assume high expectations.
- The Google representative prematurely activated my Ad Campaign before my website was completed. Subsequently, my credit card was charged for 1000's of 'clicks' and zero, not one booking inquiries.
- There is no system in place to differentiate who or where the 'Clicks' are coming from. From me, my Google Ad Campaign representative, or one of Google Ads terrible service support team.
- Good luck trying to get customer service to resolve any issues that pertains to specific complaints about the Ad being run prematurely or getting any kind of refund.
- My initial contact with the Google Ads sales rep was just before Thanksgiving 2020. I started getting billed and paused the account on January 1. Since then I received a partial refund AND another bill for almost $300!
February 22, 2021
UNETHICAL GOOGLE ADS
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
February 01, 2021
Please read before your use Google Ads Review...If you want to lose money don't read.
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- 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
September 01, 2020
Not for small businesses; dishonest promotion
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- 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.
June 03, 2020
Not Suitable for Small Business
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- 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.
November 22, 2019
Beware before using Google Ads formerly Google Adwords
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- 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
November 19, 2019
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.
October 22, 2019
Good Tool for Niche Marketing; Can Be Cumbersome
- Boosts website visits
- Boosts phone calls
- Boosts company visibility
- It has a very confusing user interface.
- It requires a lot of testing in order to achieve the desired results.
- It can be difficult to increase the click-through rate.
- It was difficult to contact customer service (based in India).