What are Google Ads?

Google Ads (or Google Ads, formerly Google Adwords) is Google's suite of advertising solutions, including various platforms, partnerships and applications. They continue to be one of the main means of online advertising, being an essential tool in the companies' strategy, as a way to increase sales.

1) Display Network and Search Network (Search)

The Display Network works upstream, making the future customer aware of the existence of the product or service, showing it to the potential customer. Whether in an article, video or website part of the Google network and its partners. The Search Network focuses more on the final stage of the sales funnel, when there is already an intentional search for information, in a state conducive to purchase.

2) The main types of Google ads

2.1. Search (Search)

This will likely be the most familiar ad type. Appears at the top of the results page (SERP – Search Engine Result Page) when any search is carried out by the user, preceded by the word “Ad”. However, the search may return not only text results, but also images of items for sale. This is the Shopping aspect, to be discussed further ahead.

2.2. Display

The Display Network uses Google partnerships, showing ads on millions of other sites and partners, in various formats, including Gmail itself:

2.3. Video

There are three broad categories of Video Ads:

2.3.1. In-Stream: I'm sure you already know about these ads, which can appear at the beginning, middle or end of your YouTube videos, even if you don't want to 😊. Depending on the variant, you can skip the ad after 5 seconds, or have it run until the end, among other options. The partner that displays the video on the platform is charged for this effect.

2.3.2. In-Search: These videos are related to content search on YouTube. If the user clicks, a payment is made by the partner.

2.3.3. Discovery: These ads may appear in search or as a suggestion to see next (Watch Next), being made available alongside content with a high probability of being seen by the user.

2.4. Shopping

In this modality, physical products are promoted, through photos of the items, with the respective price and additional information on size, availability, etc. It is accessible through the “Shopping” tab and in photos highlighted in search results.

2.5. Smart

Smart campaigns are characterized by almost complete automation, once the starting parameters have been defined. The advertiser allows Google itself to decide where the ads will be made available, with minimal maintenance effort.

2.6. App

This type of campaign aims to increase the number of app installations and/or achieve additional conversions within them. The ad delivery process is automated, choosing Google over its Search and Display networks, Play Store, YouTube and millions of partners.

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