Running display campaigns is crucial for boosting awareness and expanding the upper levels of your marketing funnel. While simply displaying your ads to potential customers is beneficial, aiming for user engagement can significantly enhance their effectiveness.
Engaged users tend to be more promising leads for products and services. This implies that my clients are more likely to see faster and better results from these individuals compared to those who merely view the ad without interacting. This is where Google Display Network’s engagement ads prove invaluable. In this article, we’ll delve into the functionalities of Google Ads’ display ad type, covering:
- Establishing campaign goals
- Setting up engagement ads
- Optimizing engagement ads for broader audience reach Let’s begin.
Defining a Specific Campaign Goal for Engagement Ads
With Google Ads emphasizing campaign goals for advertisers, setting up engagement ads has become less straightforward. Running an engagement ad campaign necessitates selecting the “Product and brand consideration” goal. After opting for “Display,” you’ll need to input your website URL in the designated field, as illustrated below.
It’s worth noting that the “Product and brand consideration” goal is the sole method for running or testing engagement ads in your Display campaigns. Let’s clarify the objective of this specific campaign goal to ensure we establish appropriate expectations. When Google refers to about goals in the new Google Ads experience, they define the “Product and brand consideration goal” as: The objective is to “familiarize users with your products and motivate them to explore your offerings in detail.” While maximizing goal conversions is universally desired, this particular campaign goal might not be ideal if conversion boosting is your primary focus. However, if your aim is to connect with a fresh audience and gauge their interaction with your brand, this campaign goal merits consideration and testing.
Engagement Display Campaign Setup: Understanding CPE Bidding
Engagement display campaigns largely mirror the setup of standard display campaigns, with one key distinction. Advertisers are limited to a single bidding option, namely cost per engagement bidding, or CPE bidding.
As the name suggests, CPE bidding requires advertisers to pay for the ad only when a user engages with it. In the context of discovery ads, engagement transpires when users choose to expand the ads by hovering their mouse over them.
Enhanced Audience Targeting with Custom Engagement Ads
Setting up an engagement ad can be more time-intensive than creating a regular display ad. This difference stems from the extensive customization options Google provides for this specific ad format. To encourage user interaction, incorporating multiple interactive elements into your ad is crucial. Let’s explore the primary elements you can integrate into your engagement ads to not only captivate attention but also drive potential traffic by aligning these customizations with your target audience. *For illustrative purposes, I’m using a hypothetical ad. The images were sourced from Musician’s Friend, and the YouTube video I used was courtesy of Gibson Guitar.
1. Leveraging Gallery and Video Cards
These components serve as the primary interaction points for viewers of your ad. You can incorporate up to 10 cards, comprising a blend of images and YouTube videos, into your engagement ad. While not depicted in the image below, multiple videos can be included. Ecommerce advertisers have the added option of integrating product feeds as cards. This simply requires selecting a product feed from your Merchant Center within the campaign settings.
When manually inputting these cards, you have the flexibility to include supplementary information or captions. This additional data for each card caption encompasses a title, a description, a call to action, and a URL. Therefore, despite the pay-per-engagement model, advertisers can direct users to multiple product pages on their website.
The captions for your cards provide an avenue for elaborating on your images—an aspect we’ll illustrate later. Another advantage of personalized captions lies in the ability to craft virtually any desired call to action. Advertisers aren’t restricted by a predefined list of call to action buttons. This freedom caters to diverse campaign objectives, whether it’s promoting product awareness or simply directing users to a blog post.
2. Crafting Compelling Messages and Calls to Action
You might be wondering, “Didn’t we already address these elements in our cards?” Indeed, we did. However, the second phase of engagement ad creation focuses on overarching messages and a call to action for the entire ad—not individual image or video cards.
Think of the messages we can incorporate as a fusion of promo and callout extensions. What message would entice potential customers to interact with your ad and explore your offerings further? Begin by compiling a list of promotions, offers, or value propositions that would resonate with a new audience. Utilize this compilation as the foundation for your initial test messages. One final point: You have the flexibility to reorder your messages and call to action elements. The display order follows a highest-to-lowest sort order. Consequently, prioritize your most impactful messages by placing them at the top of your ad setup list.
3. Refining Image and Style Options
Advertisers have three additional customization options at their disposal. While not mandatory for running engagement ads, they provide further avenues for tailoring your ads. Access these options by clicking the “More Options” link beneath the URL fields during ad setup.
Incorporating Header Images
Reinforce your branding by incorporating a header image that appears above the other elements and cards within your engagement ad. The example below highlights the header image in red:
Utilizing Invitation Images
User engagement with the ad requires hovering the mouse over it for a brief period to trigger its expansion. Initially, Google uses an ad preview as the main image. However, advertisers can upload their own images, including the most common display image ad sizes as the invitation image, to exercise greater control over this initial interaction.
Customizing Styles
This option empowers you to modify the colors, fonts, and themes of your ads. This is particularly advantageous if maintaining brand consistency across marketing efforts is paramount.
Maximizing Customer Engagement with Custom Engagement Ads
While audience exposure to your ad holds value, user interaction with your brand is undeniably more impactful. A user who lands on your website after engaging with an ad is inherently more valuable than someone who simply clicks through from a regular image ad. This signifies a greater investment of time to expand the ad, explore your offerings, and ultimately click on your CTA buttons. Prioritizing these users for remarketing audiences over basic site visitors from other display campaigns is a strategic move. Experiment with different ad element variations to identify what resonates best with your audience and drives engagement. If crafting a cohesive brand experience is a priority, consider leveraging engagement ads to deliver a distinct experience within your Display Network campaigns.