Google Ads: Understanding placement and ranking rules

Google Ads Placement

We need to know where Google ads are displayed. When you enter keywords in the Google search box, the first thing you see is search ads. They are usually located at the top and bottom of the search results page, especially the first four positions at the top, which are simply the “golden locations” in the advertising industry.
For friends who do cross-border e-commerce, Google Shopping ads (now more directly using pmax ads) are your good partners. They are displayed directly on the right side of the search results page, allowing you to see your product price, brand, service and discount information at a glance, greatly improving the shopping experience.
Don’t forget that Google ads are also displayed on millions of partner websites through Google Display Network (GDN), including graphic ads, video ads, etc., covering various websites, applications and games around the world. Video ads on YouTube, whether they are interstitial or discovery ads, are the focus of everyone’s competition.

Google Ads Categories

Google Ads mainly include search ads, display ads, shopping ads, video ads, app ads, remarketing ads, effect maximization ads and smart ads, etc. Let’s briefly talk about several types of ads.
Search ads (SearchAds) Search ads are more targeted and have a higher conversion rate. Because when users enter keywords in the search engine, they have already shown that their needs are relatively strong. Of course, the disadvantage is that the competition is fierce and the cost is relatively high.

(DisplayAds)
Display ads usually appear in the form of pictures. Compared with search ads, this form of advertising can give people a stronger visual impact and better attract users’ attention. For example, some e-commerce customers like the discount websites of some stores, including the patch ads on the shopping channels on some YouTube channels. The advantage of this type of advertising is that it is very fast to expose and has a low CPC, but it is not so targeted, so the click-through rate will be relatively low. Although the click-through rate is relatively low, we can also use it for brand promotion.
(Shopping Ads)
This is easy to understand. It is the picture ad you see when searching for product keywords on Google. It is usually displayed at the top or side of the search results. It has richer information. In addition to displaying the product picture, it also displays the price, merchant information, evaluation, etc. Users can jump to the merchant page by clicking on the ad image, which is both intuitive and convenient. Shopping ads are specially tailored for cross-border e-commerce. As long as your website has the function of adding to the shopping cart and can realize the purchase and delivery service, you can use shopping ads.

Video Ads
I won’t say much about this. Think about whether you have ever encountered ads that you can’t skip at the beginning, middle or end of a video on YouTube. Of course, now you can automatically skip ads by installing a plug-in.

Remarketing Ads
Remarketing ads are one of the most converting forms of advertising. Simply put, it is to re-engage users who have visited your website but did not complete the purchase.

Performance Maximization Ads
In simple terms: Performance Max integrates almost all Google advertising forms, including YouTube, Display, Search, Discover, Gmail and Google Maps, covering Google’s full-channel traffic.
In the past, we often had to manually optimize, and it was difficult to share some good system learning data. Now PMax brings better optimization results.
Because PMax can integrate the following multiple advertising channels together, machine learning automatically selects the best display channel and matches the corresponding advertising materials based on the goals and advertising performance of each channel, and understands consumers’ preferences and intentions in real time, it can more accurately predict which advertisements, audience groups and advertising material combinations are the best, thereby achieving the maximum effect.

The features of PMax advertising are:
1 Automatically adjust bids: Automatically select the best in each channel, and allocate more budget to ads and products with good performance.
2 Automatically label and intelligently match audiences: Accurately find target audiences with good conversions based on the goals and crowd signals we set.
3 Automatically match advertising materials: Automatically combine dynamic materials, text, pictures, videos, layouts, etc., and push the best performing materials to our target users.
PMax advertising materials are very important. In addition, when the general direction of your high-quality materials is relatively certain, reduce the cost of trial and error. After the advertisement runs for 1 week, the system will score our materials. It is recommended to replace the test materials based on the scores in about 2 weeks. Some friends will ask, should the new materials be tested in a new PMax group or modified in the original one? This operation is not absolute. If you want to test the results quickly, it will be faster to open a new PMax group. If the budget is not large, it is also OK to modify the original group.

Google Ads ranking rules

Now, let’s talk about the ranking rules of ads. The ranking of ads is not simply determined by the bid, but by the comprehensive evaluation of ad ranking. So, how is ad ranking calculated?

1. Bid Bid is an important factor in ad ranking. You need to set a maximum click bid (Max CPC) for each keyword, which is the maximum amount you are willing to pay for each click. But the actual click cost (Actual CPC) will be adjusted according to the quality score of the ad. Ads with high quality scores can get better rankings with lower bids.
2. Quality score Quality score is a key indicator to measure the quality and relevance of ads. It is composed of the following factors: Estimated click-through rate (CTR): The system estimates the click-through rate of keywords. A high click-through rate means that the ad is more attractive. Ad relevance: The ad content needs to be highly relevant to the user’s search intent. Landing page experience: The speed, loading time, content layout and user experience of the landing page will affect the quality score of the ad.
   In addition, ad extensions such as extended text, merchant reviews, promotional tags, etc. will also improve the quality score and attractiveness of the ad.

Impact of Ad Rank
Ad Rank not only affects the placement of ads, but also affects the actual click cost and bidding eligibility. Ads with high ad rank can get better rankings with lower bids, saving advertising costs and improving return on investment.