Google Ads

Formerly AdWords

AdWords is a great tool for bringing buyers further in the funnel to a business

It's not as user-friendly as other platforms

A strong amount of expertise is required to make it really successful

Essentially it's the only game in town for paid search - it gets more volume than Bing, and generally more reliable quality.

It provides pretty good capabilities for testing a variety of ads and keywords.

It integrates very well with Google Analytics in terms of being able to get additional insights into what's performing well.

Keyword research is a bit obfuscated and it can be difficult to tell what real volumes are. You really have to run things to see how they'll do for you.

It would be nice to see some more creativity in terms of new ad formats - the core hasn't really changed much, and what has changed has mostly been more room for text.

Would like to see more tools to tie performance together throughout the funnel, especially with retargeting ads.

AdWords allow us to target a wider audience of all users searching for specific keywords, which we want to show our ads for in the Google Engine, as well as target audiences depending on different criteria

With AdWords it's easy to deliver traffic to any webpage, it gives the options to see what's users' behavior, on which keywords they're more likely to click and convert, during what time of the day, in which location, etc.

Another strength is that it can work with many platforms together, such as GA, DoubleClick, Marin software, etc

More visibility and transparency on the UAC campaigns would be amazing since currently there is almost none

Finding a new audience

Targeting GEO

Managing your budget

When segmenting by race and by sex there are a lot of unknowns

Connecting the front end matrix to the back end matrix

Invalidating fraud clicks

AdWords has the best granular bid control of any direct ad buying platform I have used.

AdWords is within the Google ecosystem, which is a huge plus.

AdWords has extremely advanced bidding algorithms.

Incredibly simple to set up.

Automated bidding can run wild without close oversight.

AdWords' primary goal is to get you to spend as much money as possible on bids, you have to keep in reigned it manually.

Display advertising has been shown lately to be wildly inefficient.

AdWords includes an incredible training program, user guide and continuing education through interesting webinars.

AdWords outperforms most digital marketing tools I have used at an ROI that is not achievable in traditional media.

AdWords continues to innovate based on their intellectual knowledge of consumer technology usage such as adapting to the high use of mobile devices.

There is room for improvement when you are managing multiple businesses under one account. There's a lot of repeat data parameter input if an account needs different criteria for each campaign. It's also complicated to distribute the account budget after the initial setup.

More training related to understanding how to use the metrics provided in each campaign to build the most relevant schedule possible.

Moving an account out from under my account management was overly complicated and despite our best efforts, we lost client data in the process.

If you are offering your services/products to a niche market, it is a perfect channel since users of that niche market normally use Google Search to search for their required service/products and this is where AdWord comes in and promotes your services/products to those users.

Equality between advertisers: In AdWords, the one with more money does not always win since it uses different measurements to measure the quality of an advertisement on AdWords. So even if you spend less than your competitor but your ads are relevant and informative to users, your ads will be prioritized when customers enter a search query on Google search.

Easy to set up: all you need is a credit card and a set of keywords along with content for your ads (which is also familiar since it looks like a search result on Google Search).

Payment Method: Currently only credit cards are allowed for making payment for the ads. It would be nicer if more payment options were available.

Optimizing your ads: While setting up Adwords is easy, optimizing your ads to reach out more effectively to a customer is more advanced and more difficult. It would be nice if it was simplified so new users (or new business owners) could learn it fast and more easily.

Google will have the right to change the regulation of AdWords at any moment. So what works well for your ads today might be taken away at any time in the future since Google decides its rules.

Tracking concrete results.

Integrating with other marketing channels.

Providing valuable insights.

It can be confusing to get started.

A lot of functionality is buried behind a lot of legacy pages and weird user paths.

I'm not sure who to call for live support.

Allows you to reach out to specific groups of people - by location, gender, age group, profession etc.

Enforces a very compact form of advertising - it is easy to read and does not affect the UX on the web too much.

You pay for what you have actually used - so the pricing is very fair.

The prices could be optimised for the mid to large size campaigns.

Gives specific phrases that return SEO results

Highlights important terms

Easy to use

I didn't notice any issues.

Advertise to users online

Easy to optimize and control

Cost/CPO breakdown on country and new/current users is available

The optimize cost and marketing spend together with other sources.

Create A/B test messaging for very targeted high-intent audiences.

Geo-targeting capabilities in AdWords are great.

The scale obviously here is unmatched.

There are limits to search marketing in general. Paid clicks seem to be lower quality than organic.

There can be dual intent keywords that are near impossible to negative keyword out.

If there is any uncertainty in the business around product-market, you can potentially get taken to the cleaners in high CPC because of low quality scores.

It provides a wealth of data essential to good PPC management. This includes impression share data, quality score, clicks, impressions, conversion tracking and so on.

It is fairly familiar to anybody who has worked in the PPC industry understands its functions and metrics are therefore as close as you can get to a universal language.

Our organisation is often approached to take part in betas for new functions such as new demographic targeting tools etc., which we are able to leverage to great effect.

Observing differences between ad performance on a large scale can often requires time-consuming manipulation. There is no easy export function which you can utilise.

Removed campaigns, keywords etc. can still visually persist within the client, even years after they were last active and removing them requires a filter which could perhaps be set up as default.

The geo-location is very useful, but when radius targeting for smaller areas, it might be useful to be able to manipulate the circle and move it around on the map rather than just adding size and centre location.

Scripts seem to hold a lot of potential, but there isn't an easy room in for those with little scripting experience. Perhaps some basic scripts provided by Google themselves which can be edited would be helpful.

Brand awareness via Display ads

High increase in traffic

Full management of ads and keywords

Full control of company budget

High number of conversions that otherwise we would never achieve

Bulk changes that can only be done on the editor software

Having several accounts it doesn't allow users to look at the keywords at that level. We have to enter each account to see the respective keywords, ads, campaigns etc

Auction Insights is a good tool that let us have a rough idea of what is happening but it is very basic. It would be nice if it could bring more info.

Quality Score is something hard to understand. Sometimes similar keywords with same ads have really different QS.

Google shopping image ads are not available for lead generation business where products are bespoke

It can be very expensive depending on the keywords we are bidding in. Some keywords might easily reach £20 per click

AdWords' Keyword Planner tool is great because it allows one to conduct research on relevant keywords, assess the search volume and competitiveness of the keywords, and find similar keywords to target.

AdWords allows you to set up your campaign to target (and retarget) your intended audience at the right location on the right device during the right time if you have the information available.

AdWords clearly shows what keywords/ads are bringing the most traffic and conversion and allows you to revamp your strategy and adjust your bidding accordingly. You will have a clear sense of your CPC and ROI.

I think AdWords can be a bit daunting at first because there are so many dimensions to a single campaign that we need to account for.

Adwords is great for advertising because you can set your own budget.

Collecting and managing data is easy with Adwords. You can view what keywords are working well in your audience, what landing pages on your website work well and which need work.

Reporting is simple with AdWords. Custom reports are available at the campaign, ad group and keyword levels.

Adwords changed the names of some of the metrics which has become somewhat tricky. For example clicks are now interactions.

While the editor is useful most times, not all features are available that are in the online interface.

Adwords enables us to directly target specific customers looking for specific products and services. This means that we don't waste marketing budgets on keywords and advertising that isn't as targeted.

Adwords enables us to review a breakdown of budgets, click data, conversion data and a whole wealth of other statistics. This means we can make informed decisions on what direction we should send out marketing.

Adwords is great at helping to market specific products through Shopping Campaigns. This means that we're able to directly target customers that are looking for one of our products, for example "30cm Porcelite Squared Plate" rather than just at customers looking for "Plate".

Adwords could benefit from being able to integrate with Google Analytics more. Currently, we're able to send conversions (sales) over to adwords but being able to view which keywords and advertising campaigns generate revenue through specific products would mean we're able to gauge which products are most effective. Currently we would have to jump between Adwords and Analytics.

Adwords supplements search engine optimization by the ability to bid for placement on the first page of search engine results.

Adwords keyword reports will help a business refine the content of their landing pages on their website so as to better answer the searchers' queries.

Adwords uncovers those potential customers who are searching for information about a specific product or service, and those who are viewing related content.

Adwords is a robust tool, and it can be confusing to learn to use all the features. One feature that can be difficult to use is the goal tracking. Setting up goals that can be tracked is one area where people struggle.

Geographic targeting combined with keyword targeting is straight forward.

Budget management and scheduling is available.

Integration with Google Analytics provides a mechanism for ROI monitoring.

It can be difficult to compete with high budget advertisers in a cost effective manner.

Remarketing APIs can be difficult to integrate into third party e-commerce platforms.

Simple reporting interface. Beneficial to pulling adhoc reports to perform custom analysis.

Easy to use, friendly UI. While it is a bit slow, it's relatively easy to navigate.

Large knowledge base. Very easy to access knowledge base. Organized well. Allows everyone from beginners to advanced users to find answers to questions about the product

Quicker UI. Clunky feel at peak hours of the day.

Allows you to target your audience in the most granular way possible.

Has a great interface and organizational structure that allows someone to select keywords and write ad copy in a straightforward fashion.

Allows you to manage spend flexibly through keyword bidding and daily budgets.

It would be better, if it allowed you to manage and make updates at the account level. Much like other PPC management platforms like Marin, allow you to do.

There is room to integrate with CRMs, like Salesforce, in a more comprehensive way.

Keyword discovery tools in AdWords should be better than they are considering the amount of info that Google has access to.

Ease of use.

Innovation/Feature Development.

Reporting Functionality.

Sometimes features are released too soon/before complete functionality.

AdWords Editor does not always contain latest features.

Ad Groups - This allows us a to get more granular with our data. In a single campaign we can add as many ad groups as we like which allows us to keep tightly-knit groupings of keywords. This helps facilitate a much easier understanding of which keywords are popular, unpopular, and which ads are not working with popular keywords.

Negative Keywords - The most effective way to reduce spending, in my opinion, is through proper use of negative keywords. Identifying keywords that are popular in the context of other terms you are bidding for, but that don't make any sense for your campaign, is crucial for filtering out searches and potential paid clicks that bear no relevance to your offerings.

Regional Targeting - An operation that has product offerings that vary by location can benefit greatly from the geo-targeted campaign settings AdWords offers. This way, our ads are only part of the bidding process in the regions that they should be. Regional targeting helps us to reduce our overall spend as well as providing a better, more relevant experience to the end-user.

AdWords is, admittedly, an intimidating beast at first glance. Though most marketers will not be scared away by it, the overall user experience would greatly benefit from an overhaul of the help system and simpler explanations for each tab on the site.

If you have multiple campaigns with multiple ad groups in each campaign then the actual maintenance of your account can become cumbersome quite quickly. Anyone who has ever started out with an ad group filled with too many keywords knows the pain in extracting related keywords and copying them to their own new ad groups. Google could improve the account maintenance experience by providing easier tools for marketers to move around keywords and ad copy. For example, when a marketer is dealing with A/B split testing in ad groups -- where is the option to copy both ads to a new ad group without rekeying at least one? This creates tedious work and could be as simple as dragging and dropping keywords from one ad group into another.

Google's notification center tends to aggressively suggest keyword additions. While some of these may make sense, their pitch of 'getting your ad in front of more people' sounds too good to be true and sometimes is. As savvy AdWords marketers we know that negative keywords help us stay out of the bidding process when it doesn't make sense for us. Including every keyword that the Google algorithms suggest can lead to an increased spend with no positive impact on your investment and requires a healthy dose of skepticism.

AdWords has a great capability to manage a client’s budget in the most micro possible way. The structure that Google has created to setup adwords PPC helps you create a channelized method to control your cost and manage your visibility, through creating campaign and ad group structures wisely.

We can monitor bids for every keyword separately that present in the list, which I think is amazing flexibility and write ads for each particular category of keywords. For example if you are bidding on keyword [white shirt] you can have an ad that specifically speaks to that particular keyword. This helps advertisers stay extremely relevant to searches and hence increase the chance of brand interaction through Google paid ads.

Google’s intelligent algorithms help with conversion optimizations which will automatically determine the max CPC. (Maximum willingness to pay per click). It can also target people who have abandoned a particular task on the site and can target those users for the next couple of days to drive them to the client’s site again to finish the task. Example – hotel booking sites constantly remarket to people who don’t finish a hotel booking.

One scope of functionality that I find missing is that what if a user is not as advanced to select the best keywords for their business. Google has facility to do topic targeting on content networks, and that facility should be extended to PPC. For example if the clients want to sell shirts they can select apparel as a category and have a chance to appear on relevant searches.

Google AdWords also has a long way to go as far as mapping online to store purchases, since a lot of time the final decision is made online but the purchase happens in the store. Google is putting steps in place to get closer to this but there are several enhancements that are possible.

Targeting - Are able to target customers based on what they are searching for and what they look at online.

Pay per performance - AdWords campaigns can be run on CPC basis, this means you only pay when someone comes to your site.

Self-Managed - We can pause the campaign, increase the budget, change creative, etc. all in real time.

Non-Disclosure - The Google Content Network is not very open with where the ads actually run. You can select who to target but more often than not you don't know where the ad really ran. I would like to be able to choose which sites my ads run on.

Ad Data - Missing some metrics I would like to see about my ads particularly, again, on the GDN. Would be interested in viewability rates (i.e. How long was my ad seen? Was it above the fold?)

Would like to see image ads available to use in the Google search results page, especially when you are bidding on branded words.