Introduction
The aim of this article is to introduce you to the dynamic ads of the Google Ads search network - Dynamic Search Ads (DSA). We'll discuss how they work and their benefits, as well as some tips on how best to apply them.
For those of you who use Google Ads as a platform for paid media, you know that it is highly recommended to always be optimizing your ads and that, in a way, this can be very tiring and repetitive work.
So think about the following situation: you own an e-commerce business and you have a very wide range of products on your site, or even a great deal of seasonality in your merchandise.
It is true that you will have a lot of work to do when targeting keywords, as you will need to define each keyword to be purchased. You will also need to study the search potential and competition of the terms to be added.
Now imagine that you have the possibility of using automation to your advantage and that Google can make use of the entire index of your site to generate complete, quality ads. That's the logic behind dynamic ads!
What are dynamic ads and how do they work?
Dynamic search ads are ads that will "pull" all the data from your website and show the ad according to the user's search.
How does this happen? First of all, Google will crawl your site and extract all the content on it. This way, when a user performs a search on Google, and that search term is present on your site (being identified by Google), your ad will be able to appear.
If the user's search matches your site, Google will dynamically create ads with customized titles and URLs for each page.
The only step you'll need to do manually is to creating the descriptions. It's worth noting that the descriptions you select will be used in all your ads and should therefore be applicable to all possible searches for the set of URLs you have targeted when creating your Ad Group.
Example: Imagine that you own an e-commerce store selling various household products. A user might search on Google for something related to your merchandise, such as "non-stick cookware set", and thus be impacted by your ad with the title "Non-stick cookware set". Clicking on the link will take them to the page on your website that contains this product category.
Segmentation
Our recommendation is to have a specific campaign to use dynamic ads. That way, you'll have greater control of your results and can keep track of the search terms that are highlighted (and even add them as keywords in generic search network campaigns).
When you create a dynamic campaign, called a DSA, you have the possibility of segmenting your site. You can target your entire site or even specific product categories and URLs.
We always recommend paying attention to how you decide to carry out segmentation. This is because there is the possibility of generating unnecessary costs.
Think of the following example: if your website has a blog section and your objective with the campaign is essentially sales, how will you ensure that Google doesn't use this URL in the ads? It's at this stage that you'll solve obstacles like this.
There are several possibilities: one of them, for this type of situation, would be to exclude certain URLs so that they don't appear in dynamic ads, through negative targeting. Or even negative certain words from within the site in order not to print them.
When targeting, one tip is to separate Ad Groups by certain URL rules. For example: URL contains "/products", so that Google only searches for terms in the products section of your site.
Benefits and Best Practices
Saving time is just one of the benefits that DSAs provide. We can also highlight the measurement of which products are generating the most results, the generation of more effective titles (since the terms searched for and found in the URL will automatically enter this field) and the fact that it is not necessary to create keywords.
In DSA campaigns, it is always recommended to have two dynamic adswith a focus on varying the descriptions. This way, you'll be running an A/B test to find out which performance is better and make optimizations based on these insights.
What's more, even if you don't have the option to add keywords, you can negate search terms that are not closely related to the products the brand offers. This reduces costs and improves the delivery of results.
One of the most frequently asked questions is about configuration and costs. As with other campaigns, the use of dynamic ads follows the same pattern.
The same bidding strategies will be available, which you can check out in this other article on our blog: Google Ads Bidding Strategies and Conversion Actions.
It is important to note that in order to have this type of ad within your structure, it is recommended that you have a good history of traffic on your site, as well as good SEO.
Remembering our previous tip: separate dynamic ads into a specific campaign for this format! That way, you'll have more control over your results.
DSA campaigns are also great for driving traffic to your site. For example, if you have a blog full of interesting content for the Top of the Funnel, why not create a targeted campaign there? This way, as new articles are added to the blog, there's no need to include new keywords, as there's a dynamic search.
Conclusion
Dynamic search network ads are great allies for those looking to optimize the time spent creating ads, especially if you have dozens of pages and hundreds of products on your site. Or even if you don't know exactly which products or terms lead users to your site the most.
DSA ads usually bring good results, since they are well targeted and tend to cost less than other types of campaigns. But it all depends on the objective of the campaign and the correct configuration. For this reason, we consider it to be an excellent strategy for a wide range of companies, from real estate agents with a large catalog of properties to e-commerces and even blog content.
