Responsive Ads + You = Better Leads

Hot take: traditional Google text ads have become stale. Text-only ads are not only limited in their reach but also limited in their placement. If your bid is high enough to put you at the top of the SERPs than awesome! If not? The best place to bury a body is below the fold on page 1.

To make things more effective, Google has introduced an ad type called Responsive Ads. These responsive ads (working on Google’s Display Network or GDN) come with a host of powerful features that can be modified to meet the specific needs of your business. Let’s dive deeper into the who, what, where, and why of responsive ads on Google.

Defining Responsive Ads

Responsive ads are a newer breed of online advertisements powered by Google. They are designed to use machine learning in order to deliver the most appropriate content to users during a search query. Machine learning? Yes, this is the future and we WELCOME our robot overlords wholeheartedly.

Responsive ads adapt to different sizes and placements on web pages to make them more agile and adaptive. For example, these ads can adapt from a desktop to a mobile view without large alterations the content and messaging within the ad (re: without wonking it up). Responsive ads are designed to maintain their appearance across many different types of media and ad formats.

The long story made short: Responsive ads provide you with more control over your messaging technique while providing more room for content to be displayed.

Benefits of Responsive Ads

Responsive ads can benefit your business in many different ways–so let’s take a look at some of the top benefits so you’re in the know. 

1. Reach more customers

   When a customer carries out a search query, the look of the ad will play a large role in determining what will earn their click. Responsive ads are designed to automatically adjust to various sizes across the Google Display Network. This means that the ad will automatically adapt its text, images, and logo to fit the available real estate on the screen. Responsive ads can adapt to fit specific devices, increasing your customer outreach (Psst: more impressions mean more conversions which can mean more $$$).

2. Ads are optimized like whoa

   Responsive ads are essentially an intelligent form of advertising. These ads use machine learning to develop the optimal combination of assets for displaying your messages across various platforms.

   Here’s how:  Google develops a model where it will predict the best combination of pictures, logos, and text to display within relevant advertisement slots. This dynamic model helps you create optimized ads that will reach more qualified customers at any given time. Re: Google’s robots know when your audience is online, what they’re looking for, and their location so they use AI to serve the right ads at the right time in the right way. Can your ROOMBA do that? No, it cannot…yet.

3. Budget-friendly
   

   In previous ad iterations, you would need to create and optimize each advertisement to reach an intended audience. If you had a campaign with multiple sized ads you wanted to run you would need to create an ad for each banner size, screen size, and platform where the ad would be displayed. Translation: A lot of work. And that didn’t guarantee that your ad imagery would be approved by Google, just that you could upload it.But thanks to responsive ads, you only need to provide a few images and logos. From there, Google’s responsive platform will optimize the size and appearance of each advertisement to fit within the available space. This allows your business to save on the time and cost of creating multiple ads to fit various platforms. Saving time = saving money!

4. Ease of use

   Setting up responsive ads is as easy as ABC. In most cases, all you need to do is whip up some compelling copy, create a relevant landing page, and provide them with some images and logos. Google’s machine learning platform will handle the rest.

   Quick note: While setting it UP is easy, creating ad copy and image assets requires some planning and research so be sure to think about the audience you’re trying to reach and what they find useful and attractive.

With an easier process for creating ads, you can spend more time focusing on your customer outreach and experience rather than creating the ad itself.