Week 5: Paid Advertising & Google Ads
Week 5 Overview: Paid Advertising & Google Ads
This week, we shift from earning traffic to buying it. Paid advertising is a powerful way to get your message in front of a targeted audience quickly.
Google Ads
Google Ads is a powerful platform for running paid ads on Google's search engine and its partner sites. It's based on a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) model.
Common Google Ad Types
- Search Ads: These are text-based ads that appear on the Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP) when a user searches for a keyword you've targeted.
- Display Ads: These are image or video ads that appear on websites within the Google Display Network, a vast collection of third-party websites that have partnered with Google.
- Shopping Ads: These are product-focused ads that appear for product-related searches. They show an image, title, price, and store name, making them highly effective for e-commerce.
Facebook & Instagram Ads
You can run ads across both platforms using the Meta Ads Manager. The platform's strength lies in its incredibly detailed audience targeting options.
You can target users based on:
- Demographics: Age, gender, location, language, job title.
- Interests: What pages they've liked, their hobbies, and interests.
- Behaviors: Past purchase behavior, device usage, and more.
Budgeting, Bidding, and Audience Targeting
These three elements are the core of managing any paid ad campaign.
Core Concepts
- Budgeting
- You set either a daily budget (the average amount you're willing to spend per day) or a lifetime budget (the maximum you'll spend over the entire campaign).
- Bidding
- You tell the ad platform how much you're willing to pay for a specific action. This could be a click (CPC - Cost Per Click) or 1,000 impressions (CPM - Cost Per Mille).
- Audience Targeting
- This is how you define who sees your ads. A well-defined audience is critical for success and prevents you from wasting money on people who aren't interested.
Tracking Conversions with Pixels
How do you know if your ads are leading to sales? You track them.
What is a Pixel?
A "pixel" (like the Meta Pixel for Facebook/Instagram or the Google Ads conversion tracking tag) is a small piece of code that you place on your website. It tracks visitor activity and sends this data back to the ad platform.
This allows you to measure the effectiveness of your ad campaigns by seeing what actions users take after clicking your ad, such as making a purchase, filling out a form, or adding an item to their cart. This is essential for calculating your Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).