In this article I will go through the following:
- What are dynamic search ads?
- Advantages with dynamic search ads
- How to configure dynamic search ads
- How to use them in combination with custom data feeders
- Tips for optimising dynamic search ads
What are Dynamic Search Ads (DSA)?
Dynamic search ads are a type of search ads in Google Ads which is displayed based on the content of your website, in combination with the user's own search term. Google Crawler your website and scan the contents to share it in categories, matched with the user search term. So if something on your website is considered relevant to a search term, Google automatically generates a tailored advertisement with a heading and landing page. All you have to do is write the descriptions to the adverts. In this way, dynamic search ads allow you to focus on your most valuable campaigns, by automating those you otherwise don't have much time for, and still reach potential customers with relevant ads.
Benefits with Dynamic Search Ads
Compared to hard search ads, it is playful easy and takes a short time to set up up dynamic search ads. Because of Google's dynamic generation of headlines, the description is all you need to do yourself. The headings are always based on the matched product and will therefore most often be relevant for the search in question.
Splitting up a large website in campaigns and advertising groups with original advertisements is both time- and resource-intensive, and so often focussessers and seasonal commodities. With dynamic search ads, you cover products, categories and parts of your site that you have not made ads for yourself.
Since a large proportion of daily Google searches are unique, you will capture many of these with dynamic search ads. The searches your adverts will appear in the search term report, where you can fetch out words and phrases that may even perform better than those you offer in existing campaigns.
So with dynamic search ads, you save both time and money, and you get input on how to do other campaigns even better.
How to configure dynamic search ads
Promotion Settings
- Under the Promotions tab in the Page menu, click on the blue plus sign (+) to create a new campaign.
- Select the target you have for the new campaign, or choose “Create a campaign with no specific goal”.
- Choose “Search”.
- On the next page you will be giving a name for the campaign and will set up the target and budget as usual, but under “Network” you will have to make sure you only use the “Search Network”. This is because dynamic search ads are only for the search network. Once you have done this, you can press on.
- Now you're going to create advertising groups. Top you have to switch from “Default” to “Dynamic”.
- When you have selected this option, the content of the page will change, and you can now enter your website URL.
Advertising Group Settings
This is part of the configuration that makes dynamic search ads unique from normal search campaigns. Before you reach this stage, you have to choose whether to take the campaign on your entire website, only specific subpages or specific categories. This is where you create the descriptions for the ads, and you must therefore make sure that the area on the website you target is included in the descriptions you make.
First, you have to choose your dynamic ad objectives. There are three alternatives:
- Recommended categories for your website: Google automatically categorizes the content of the site, here you can select specific categories for specific advertising exploits.
- Specific Web pages: Here you can select specific pages you want Google to target.
- All Web pages: Select this if you want the entire page with all content to be included.
- When you have set target correction, create the adverts. Remember that the heading and landing page will be dynamically generated based on the search term and content on the page. All you have to do is describe it.
- When the ad is filled, press “Finish”, and the campaign will be live as long as all steps above are completed.
From here you will have the possibility to implement and adjust the various details and settings as in any other search campaign, such as:
- Buds adjustments for units
- Advertising plan and bidding adjustments
- Ad extension
- Target group
- Negative search terms
This is the basic thing you need to know about dynamic search ads. If you want to advance within the field, I recommend reading on!
Dynamic ad measures
Google recommends setting up DSA ad groups by category, which is automatically generated based on the content on the website. These categories are what Google believes are recommended for your website, and this is usually the best option, but in some cases it does not provide sufficient information to target or exclude the right products. For example, in cases of online shops that have few products, Google can categorize everything under one category, where one would rather have more control over smaller product groups or individual products.
Targeted on specific websites
If the categories are not available, you can choose to target specific websites. Let's say you sell electronics and you will target all products related to phones in the same group. If all the URLs for phones contain /phones/ you can target all pages that include “phones”.
In addition, you can create specific rules to target them in groups or individually. You can also customize this to target “phones”-containing URLs as well as a specific label on the page. This type of targeting can help to isolate some products and adjust the bids based on performance.
Target correction with custom data feed
You can also: create custom data feeds with all URLs you want to target and organise by tag. This way you can create ad groups that target specific URLs based on labels. For example, organise by rating, category, bestseller, location or product URLs you want to exclude.
Organize by Custom Tags
Using a data feed will allow you to quickly see how easily you can organize all products by type or brand, and create custom ad groups for what you want to target. If we think about the example of the telephone, you can organize by, for example, a brand, price or bestseller. By organising this way you can make individual level bidding adjustments based on performance and exclude products that you do not want to advertise.
You should also make sure that the labels are clearly defined so that you can easily add products in the future. For example, if you bring in a new model of a phone, it will be easier to add them with the right label, so it will appear in the ad group for the specific label.
DSA Optimization
Although dynamic search ads are automatically produced, and more or less live their own lives, there are four points I will draw out as necessary when it comes to maintenance and optimization:
- You should add negative keywords to exclude searches that are not relevant. Browse the search terms and exclude those searches that are not relevant to your website.
- Excludes subpages that are not relevant and you will not advertise on, such as blog or FAQ.
- Create custom ad groups for subpages to gain better control of the campaigns.
- implement a script adding all the search terms you offer in other campaigns as negative keywords in your DSA campaign. This way you avoid duplicates across your campaigns and ensure that the ads you have created will be trinked when someone searches for these search terms.
Inspiration to this article is from PPC Hero ”Dynamic Search Ads for Beginners“ and ”Dynamic Search Ads for Advanced Users“.