Rich Media Ads in Google Display Network

You can create Rich Media Ads, also called Engagement ads by doing the following:

1.  Sign in to your AdWords account at https://adwords.google.com.
2. On the Campaigns tab, click the + Campaign drop-down menu, and select Display Network only.
3. Add a name for your campaign. To help you later find your campaign, you might want to indicate in the name that this is an engagement campaign.
4. Choose the campaign type Display Network only - Engagement.
5. Adjust location and language if needed.
6. In the "Bidding and budget" section, the only option available is "Focus on engagements, manual maximum CPC bidding." With this option, you'll pay only when people engage with your ads.
7. Enter your budget.
8. Select any other settings you'd like for your campaign.
9. Click Save and continue.
10. On the ad group page, enter the name of the ad group and your default bid. This is the most you'll pay per engagements for ads in the ad group.
11. Choose how you want to target your ads (for example, "Interests & remarketing").
12. Click Save and continue.
13. On the next page, click the ad template you want to use.
14. Provide the required resources and information to create your engagement ad and click Review and finish.
15. You can create more engagement ads for your campaign by clicking the "+" sign. When you’re done creating your ads, click Save and continue.

Rich Media Ads or Engagement Ads:

Engagement ads are available in standard IAB sizes and run across all devices - desktop, tablets and mobile phones. After a two-second hover delay, they load rich media either within the ad (Hover-to-Play ads), or in an expanded canvas, (Lightbox Ads). This type of interaction reduces accidental engagements, providing a better experience for customers and better value for advertisers.

Lightbox ads transform a standard display ad into a large canvas, bringing the landing page experience directly to the ad. For example, people could watch your videos or interact with your catalogs right from the ad.

Hover-to-Play ads bring the full sight, sound, and motion power of video to a standard medium rectangle unit, using a two-second hover delay to start playing the video.

+Post Ads amplify your brand’s content by easily turning Google+ posts into display ads that run across the web. The live, social ad format allows you to go beyond clicks to live conversations with your audience. People can join a Hangout On Air, add a comment, follow your brand or give a +1, right from the ads.

Display Network Best Practices

Display Campaign Structure Best Practices

The Display Network is a completely different animal than the Search Network. You are targeting people earlier in the buying cycle who are not actively searching for your product or service. Therefor, your strategy is going to be completely different. Below are the best practices to follow when running ads on the Display Network. You can view a helpful article from Google that walks you through the step-by-step process of setting up Display campaigns here.

• Separate Search and Display Campaigns. You are targeting a completely different audience on the Display Network that behaves in a different manner.
• Create tightly themed ad groups of between 5-20 keywords. The more closely related your keywords, the more likely it is that your ads will be targeted to the write audience. A good strategy is to create ad groups around each product or service you offer.
• Avoid dynamic keyword insertion. Because no one particular keyword is used to trigger your ads on the Display Network, keyword insertion will not function properly. Therefore we do not recommend using it as part of your ad text.
• Include negative keywords. The more negative keywords included on a particular topic, the less likely your ad is to appear on pages that match that topic.
• Test multiple ad formats in all available sizes. Don’t just stick with running text ads on the Display Network. Test image and video ads to determine what type of ad will perform best.
• Utilize targeting methods to reach different audiences. Google offers many different targeting options for the Display Network. We’ll go over these more in depth in the next section.

Display Network Targeting

In the Display Network’s infancy, when it was still called the Content network, there were just two types of targeting options: automatic placements and managed placements. Now, it seems like Google releases a new type of targeting feature every month. Below is a chart that lays out the different types of targeting options available on the Display Network.

I recommend separating out each type of targeting into its own campaign in order to gauge performance. However, these targeting options can be used together to show your ads to the most relevant users. For example, if you sell jewelry you can select the Topic “Gifts & Special Occasions” and then include keywords like “jewelry” and “necklace” to have your ads show on specific pages within the topic you selected.

So now that you are a little more familiar with all of the targeting options, how do you know which ones to use? Well, I would recommending at least testing all of them but there is a strategy you can follow to effectively grow your conversion volume. Take a look at the graph below from a recent Google Display Network webinar:

This graph compares each of the targeting options on Conversion Rate and CPA. The size of the bubble around each option reflects the conversion volume you can expect. As you can see, Remarketing will have a higher conversion rate and lower CPA than the other options. This makes sense as you are targeting people who have already shown interest in your site. However, you can expect to generate a lower number of conversions since you are targeting a smaller audience.

If you are just starting out on the Display Network, I would recommend starting withRemarketing and Contextual targeting campaigns as they will give you the most return on investment. However, if you are more focused on branding instead of generating conversions, you may want to start with a Topics campaign to reach the largest audience. You overall PPC strategy will guide you in where to begin your Display Network efforts.

Tips For Display Network Optimization

Once you’ve structured your campaigns, selected your targeting options, and started gathering data it’s time to optimize. You can see how you are performing on the Display Network by looking at the Networks tab. Below are 5 tips to follow when making optimizations to Display Campaigns.

1. Focus on Conversions, not CTR. Your click-through rate on the Display Network will be lower than the search network because of the sheer volume of impressions. Since user behavior on search is different from content, focus on conversions, not CTR. Note that Display Network CTR doesn’t affect your ad’s Quality Score on the Search network.
2. Increase bids on high-performing sites to maximize the delivery of your ads on those sites. I would note that we have had experiences where adding sites to managed placements has lead to higher cost-per-clicks without much additional conversions, so test a few managed placements at a time to determine if an increase in bidding increases performance.
3. Decrease bids on poor-performing sites that aren’t meeting your goals.
4. Exclude from your campaign specific sites and that aren’t performing well. You can exclude placements at the campaign or ad group level. Start small with just excluding sites at the ad group level. Check to make sure a placement isn’t performing well for all ad groups in a campaign before excluding at the campaign level.
5. Expand on well-performing ad groups. This is the perfect time to put thecontextual targeting tool to use