If your business employs paid advertising campaigns, it’s highly probable that you’ve utilized Google Ads. This platform enables you to showcase pay-per-click (PPC) ads within search engine results and on affiliated third-party websites, solidifying its position as the most prevalent advertising medium.
One significant advantage of Google Ads is its continuous evolution. A notable enhancement in recent years has been the introduction of Google Ads Intelligence, which employs artificial intelligence (AI) tools to refine your advertising process.
In this article, we will delve into the following topics:
– What is Google Ads Intelligence?
– 7 AI features in Google Ads Intelligence
– Best practices for utilizing AI in Google Ads
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Google Ads Intelligence encompasses a suite of AI-driven tools provided by Google through its advertising platform. Some of these tools have been available for years and have recently received upgrades, while others are entirely new. Regardless, all of them leverage AI (both generative and otherwise) to assist you in crafting your campaigns according to your preferences.
Now that we’ve established the definition, let’s discuss the actual features included in Google Ads AI. The total number of features may vary depending on the criteria used, but for this article, we will focus on seven core features:
1. Smart bidding
2. Broad match
3. Conversational experience
4. Responsive search ads
5. Optimized targeting
6. Automatically created visual assets
7. YouTube creative tools
Read on to learn more about each of these features.
Smart bidding has been a staple for some time. This tool allows Google to automatically set your bids, sparing you the manual effort of doing so for every individual ad.
However, this doesn’t imply that Google Ads has complete control over your bidding strategy. You can establish guidelines and limits for it to adhere to. Nonetheless, it saves you the hassle of manually setting each bid. It can adjust your campaign bidding as needed to keep pace with changes in search results.
Smart bidding considers past campaign performance and a multitude of ranking factors when setting your bids for you, making it an effective tool for many businesses.
Running ads in search results may sometimes benefit from casting a wider net to reach a larger audience. To achieve this, you might find the broad match feature helpful. This tool identifies terms related to the core keywords you’re targeting and displays your ads to individuals searching for those terms.
Conversational experience is one of the most prominent additions to the Google AI advertising suite. This feature is akin to a simple generative AI tool like ChatGPT, where you can interact directly with the AI tool to generate headlines, keywords, and images for your ads.
As the tool generates ideas, you can engage with it to accept the ones you like and reject the ones you don’t. By conversing with it back and forth, you can fine-tune its suggestions until you have an ad that meets your satisfaction.
Responsive search ads (RSA) are a type of ad option within Google Ads. To create these ads, you input several headlines and descriptions, and Google then automatically tests different combinations from these options to determine which performs best in search results.
In addition to targeting specific keywords, Google Ads allows you to target specific behaviors and demographics, and AI can assist with that as well. You can use Google Ads AI to expand your target audience by identifying new, relevant groups. When identifying these groups, Google focuses on their likelihood of conversion.
The better you understand your existing customers and what drives them, the more efficiently Google will be able to seek out new audiences that align with your criteria.
For many of your ads, you may want to include a visual component. Fortunately, Google AI advertising features can help with this task as well. Google Ads can generate images based on a brief text description of your ad, and you can then filter through the options it generates to find ones you like.
Lastly, be aware of the YouTube creative tools within Google Ads AI. Since Google owns YouTube, you can run YouTube ads through the platform as well, and you can use AI to help you create those ads. There are several AI features designed to help you edit your video ads more quickly and efficiently.
Before concluding, let’s cover a few tips you should follow when using Google AI advertising features:
1. Train the AI with historical data
2. Don’t give the AI full control
3. Measure the results of your AI-driven ads
Read on for more information on each tip.
AI often relies on past data to determine what it should do for your campaigns going forward. Whether it’s identifying new keyword opportunities, setting your bids, or expanding your audience, it’s at its most effective when it has access to a wealth of data.
For this reason, ensure you provide the AI in Google Ads with as much data as possible. Specifically, provide it with data from your past campaigns so that it can see what has worked well for you and what hasn’t. If you’ve been using Google Ads for a long time, that data should already be there. If not, you can import it from elsewhere.
A drawback of any AI tool is the potential for it to cause significant issues. If you hand over complete control to an AI algorithm, you might not be satisfied with the results it produces.
However, the good news is that there are numerous safeguards within Google Ads to limit the AI’s actions. It’s not as if the AI can start making excessively high bids for you; it must remain within the limits you set for it.
Nonetheless, make sure you don’t give the AI a larger role in your campaigns than you’re comfortable with. You should still handle some aspects manually. The exact percentage of AI-driven versus manual tasks is up to you.
Finally, ensure you monitor the performance of your AI-driven campaigns. If the AI isn’t delivering the results you expected, you’ll want to catch that early so that you can reoptimize. These reoptimizations may involve adjusting some AI settings or taking over certain tasks manually.
In either case, the only way to determine what you need to do regarding your campaigns is to monitor the results and observe their performance.
Now that you know how to leverage AI in Google Ads, you can start utilizing these AI features to enhance your campaigns. However, developing an effective advertising strategy requires more than just helpful tools. If you aim to succeed in your PPC efforts, consider partnering with an agency like WebFX.
With over 28 years of marketing experience, we know how to generate revenue through paid advertising. When you partner with us for our PPC services, you’ll gain access to a team of knowledgeable advertisers who can elevate your paid ads to new heights.
Interested in partnering with us? Call us at 888-601-5359 or contact us online today!
