What is Google Ads (Beginner's Guide)

As long as you search for what Google Ads is, it means that you want to exploit the potential of the world's largest digital advertising network to market something and make a profit from it in one of the ways.

The giant Google Ads platform is one of the most important platforms that many marketers and owners of companies and brands, whether large or emerging, rely on.

If you are one of those and want to start your journey in the fun world of Google Ads, then you are in the right place, because in this guide you will learn everything you need.

In this guide you will find:

• Why most marketers in the world rely specifically on Google to promote their products and services.
• The types and places of ads that the giant Google network provides you.
• How does the Google Ads platform (formerly Google Adwords) work?
• How ads rank in search results.
• How to choose photos and videos that appear on different sites that cooperate with Google.
• How is the cost of a single ad calculated?
• The most important resources you need to become a professional Google Ads.

All this you will find presented to you simply and clearly with the use of many examples and illustrations, as this is our habit on the site of winners.

Why do you want to rely on Google Ads?

To get new customers for your business, or to promote your various products, you can use many free platforms and methods to promote such as:

• Publish articles on your site and get traffic from different search engines.
• Pay attention to SEO in your online store and get customers from search engines.
• Post content on various social networking sites (Facebook – Instagram – Telegram – LinkedIn) and build your audience.

So why do you want to spend money on advertising, especially the ads of Google, that giant network, or rather why are there so many companies and marketers who pay millions to advertise on Google?

You probably have a conception of the answer to this question, and perhaps these are the reasons that led you to initially search for what Google Ads is or what Google Adwords is.

However, there are several reasons I want you to keep in mind to start your journey using the giant capabilities of Google Ads, and you are perfectly aware of all the factors on which your success depends.

1- Google enables you to promote in many ways

If you think that Google enables you to make ads on the search engine results page only, you don't see the whole picture, there are a lot of places that Google provides you to place your ads.

For example, you'll find:

• Promotional email ads that you can show to everyone who has a Gmail account.
• Ads in the form of short photos or videos on different sites.
• Ads on the YouTube platform.
• Ads on the famous Google search engine.
• Ads on Android apps.

Don't worry, I'll show you later all the main types of Google ads and what distinguishes each type.

2- Google is the most reliable site for humans in the world

Advertising is to put your product or service in front of the right person at the right time, and Google is the most used site in the world according to many statistics.

There are more than 3.5 billion searches done on Google every day, not to mention YouTube and other Google platforms and products that you can use to promote.

This means that whatever service or product you want to promote, Google will enable you to reach those interested in it anywhere in the world.

3- Google offers you huge possibilities to implement successful advertising campaigns

There are many possibilities that most advertising platforms in the world do not provide and that Google provides to advertisers, for example, Google enables you to:

• Target specific keywords to place your ads on.
• Place your ads in front of a specific category of people only according to (age - gender - interests - geographical location).
• You can select specific sites or videos to place your ads in.
• You can retarget your visitors to save on your ad spend.
• Google provides you with the best tracking and analysis tools to test the results of your advertising campaigns.
• Google relies on various collected data and provides it to advertisers.
• Google is keen to deliver a strong user experience.

Therefore, according to Google itself, for every dollar spent on Google Ads,  the advertiser gets $ 8 in return, which is a very large number for every marketer or business owner.

This makes you trust Google Ads and that it will bring you positive results once you know how to use it properly.

4- Free promotion takes a lot of time

Perhaps the strongest reason to rely on advertising, in general, is that free promotion through social media, creating a blog, or even creating a YouTube channel takes a lot of time and maybe also some money.

You need:

• Find new ideas for writing your essays or making videos.
• Use programs to design photos and videos professionally.
• Build a relationship with the audience and provide good content.

All of this takes a lot of time and effort, and ads often shorten the way for you, which is the most powerful reason to use ads in general.

Of course, there is a benefit to you from using one of the free methods such as the one below:

• Content marketing.
• Social Media Marketing
• Provide good customer service
• Search Engine Optimization
• Marketing through YouTube videos.

All the above methods achieve positive results, which is essential for many brands, companies, and small business owners, but imagine combining the power of these methods with the possibilities offered by Google Ads.

You'll be able to use your time and budget in a very efficient way, and you'll be able to rely on retargeting and testing different traffic sources.

Now that we know the importance and power of the Google Ads platform, let's now learn how it works, how Google selects and ranks ads, and other important things for any advertiser.

Types of Google Ads offered by Google Ads

The main types of advertising campaigns (Google Ad Campaign) are the ones you see in the following image:

The first type is: Search Network Ads

This type is intended for text ads that appear to the user in any search engine owned by Google, such as:

• Regular Google Search.
• Search on Google Maps.
• Search on YouTube.

Type II: Google Display Network

This type is intended to display your ads in sites and places that are either fully owned by Google or have partnered with their owners to place ads in them.

Do you see the ads that appear on this page now between the lines of whether you are reading this guide using a computer or a phone? These ads appear to you because our site is subscribed to Google Adsense.

Many sites in the world allow advertisers to place ads on them, and this is what Google has exploited, as it has built a large platform that regulates the relationship between the advertiser and the publisher so that each of them guarantees his right.

There are plenty of examples of where you can place your ads such as:

• Sites involved in the Adsense program as I mentioned.
• Email (when you open your Gmail account,  you don't see advertising emails in your inbox).
• Image ads that are on YouTube itself (those that you find to the right or left of the video when you use a computer).

Type III: Google Shopping Ads

This type is intended for online stores that can put different products and some information about them in front of anyone looking for these products.

Look, for example, at the following picture that appeared to me when I searched for "Sharp Refrigerator", one of the popular types of refrigerators:

You will find that Nike company the main company that distributes this product in Egypt, has made an ad on Google to sell this product directly to everyone interested in it.

Type IV: Video Ads

Video ads are one of the most important and best ads that marketers rely on, and since Google owns the giant YouTube, which is the largest search engine in the world for videos.

Marketers and business owners had to use this large audience through targeted video ads.

Type V: Universal App

This type is intended for ads on the Android network, which contains millions of applications and is used by many people, you can promote your application, or you can place some ads on certain applications or target a specific audience.

All these places, whether owned by Google (Gmail – YouTube) or whose owners allow Google to place ads in them, such as sites, applications, and owners of various YouTube channels.

It enables you to get new customers through ads in a variety of different ways, and this is one of the most important reasons why marketers and owners of any business rely on Google Ads to promote various products and services.

How does the Google Ads platform (formerly Google Adwords) work?

The Google Ads platform displays ads to interested people and potential customers, based on two principles: bidding and quality, each advertiser bids on keywords to appear in the first results in different search results, or to appear on the pages of sites or videos appropriate to him, depending on the type of advertising campaign.

You are not the only one who advertises in a particular field or about a particular product, and here comes the role of Google Ads in determining what advertisement is worth appearing in the first results.

Each person who wants to take advantage of this keyword (or video - or site) designs his ad (text ad - image - video) and then puts it in Google Ads and sets his bid amount.

Based on the above, for Google Ads to  identify and rank ads, it relies on two things:

• Bid value per advertiser.
• Quality Score.

Let me explain each factor to you, and then put in your hands a wonderful infographic to explain to you more how the whole process works, and also how the cost of each ad you make is determined.

How does bidding work on Google Ads?

The first factor that Google Ads relies on to determine ad ranking is bidding, and bidding is the maximum amount you can pay to rank first for your ad.

Let's say, for example, that you sell a "Sharp refrigerator", and you want to place an ad on this keyword on Google, and you say that the maximum amount you will pay for each click on your ad is $ 2, so the amount you will increase is $ 2.

Since you are not alone in selling this product and wanting to exploit the Google search engine, there will be other people bidding on the same search word, perhaps one of the bids for $ 3 and another for $ 1.5 ... And so on.

Based on this, Google will show the ad whose owner pays the most first, and then it will display ads whose owners pay the least according to his bidding amount.

What is the Quality Score and how is it used to calculate Ad Rank

The second factor that is used in the ranking of ads is the Quality Score or Quality Scale, which is a measure used by Google to evaluate each ad so that it evaluates each of the:

• The appropriateness of the ad itself to the research word or the place where the ad will be placed, for example, it is difficult to place an ad for a refrigerator on a site that talks about games.
• The suitability of the Landing Page for the ad.
• The advertiser's account history and the absence of any complaints or irregularities in his account.
• Calculate the CTR rate, which is a measure of user interaction for the same ad.

The value of the Quality metric is from 0 to 10, if you get a Quality Score of 10, it means that your ad and account are excellent and will often outperform anyone else in any bid.

Check out the following Infographic from Wordstream, a  global ad-buying platform, which explains how ads are arranged and how they cost:

You also see how Ad Rank is calculated, which is equal to the product of the quality metric multiplied by your bid value.

The account with the highest Ad Rank value is the one whose ad is placed in the first result, and the same is done for placing Display-type ads like the ones you see on various YouTube pages and videos.

But what is different is the value of the bid itself, which I will explain to you later... The important thing now is that you know how the ads that are placed in front of you are chosen.

How to calculate advertising cost

In the previous infographic, it was explained how to calculate the value of the ad, which is the value you pay for each click on your ad, or the so-called CPC, as follows:

• After determining the Ad Rank value for each ad and selecting the ad that will appear in the first result.
• The Ad Rank value is chosen for declaration number 2.
• Then divide this number by the value of the quality scale of the first ad.
• Then add $0.01 to the split output, which is the CPC for the first ad.
• In the same way, the cost of each ad is calculated by knowing the Ad Rank value of the next ad, as shown in Infographic.

Thus, the ranking of the ads does not depend directly on the value of the bid, as you can see in the Infographic that the ad that won first place made the lowest bid, which is only $ 2.

Therefore, the most important factor that you should pay attention to is your Quality Score, the higher the value you get, the lower the cost you pay, and also beat the competitors.

This is how ads are ranked and calculated in the Google Ads platform, but one point I want to make clear to you so that you have the complete picture, and that is the difference between CPC and CPM.

What is the difference between CPC and CPM?

As I mentioned earlier in the method of calculating the cost of advertising, display ads are calculated in a somewhat different way, which is the CPM calculation.

CPM is an abbreviation for Cost Per Mile, which is the calculation of your advertising cost per impression 1000 times, and this is what is used in this type of ad.

The cost calculation process is done in the same way as I explained earlier, but this time it is based on a set of ads, and also the appropriateness of the ad is determined not based on keywords.

Rather, according to the site or video on which the ad is placed, then the Ad Rank is calculated for each ad and then the rest of the steps that I mentioned earlier.

How to get started in Google Ads

The Google Ads platform may seem a little complicated, especially if you are a beginner in this field, but Google has created an integrated course that explains everything on this platform, which you can access from here.

And that's not all, soon hopefully we'll be rolling out a photo guide on how to do your first ad on Google Ads here on our website, so don't miss it.

For more courses in the field of digital marketing, see our previous article with the link below:

The 11 Best Digital Marketing Courses (Your Guide to Learning Digital Marketing)

Before making any advertisement on Google, you must first check your copy of the ad, to ensure that you get the highest quality score and thus win bids.

Copywriting and landing page design is the most important step before thinking about the advertisement itself, and to learn these skills, you should look at the following guide:

How to Write a Marketing Advertisement (Your Practical Step-by-Step Guide)

There is no need to emphasize the importance of the quality of the service or product you offer, the best way to promote is to rely on people's feedback and talk about what you offer.

As I mentioned earlier, be sure to keep an eye on our site, because we'll be creating comprehensive guides on all types of ads and how to design them and then place them on Google Ads and other platforms.