We have a new feature to play with in AdWords. The feature is called Dynamic Search Ads and it is particularly suited to e-commerce campaigns where stock availability is an issue and large numbers of product releases and discontinuations happen on a daily basis. Google has been making a big deal lately about how 16% of all searches conducted on Google each day are completely new (check out the page with the squiggly writing here: Google AdWords Answers).
What are Dynamic Search Ads?
When using this feature, Google maintains a fresh index of your website and inventory. When a relevant search occurs, the title of an ad is dynamically generated based on the search query (just like Dynamic Keyword Insertion) and the text of the ad from the most relevant landing page on your website. This ad then enters the search auction as per normal. It will be superseded by any manually created ads that are trigged by the same search query. Theoretically, however, you could just give Google a credit card number, a domain to work with, a CPC bid and some template ad copy and let it go. It seems like something you would want to keep a close eye on. The same way that you would think modern trains practically drive themselves… but you’d be very wrong.
How much control can you exercise over it?
Being a little bit of a control freak, when I first heard of Dynamic Search Ads, I was a little perturbed by something which sounded like a fire and forget free-for-all have-your-way-with-my-credit-card licence-for-Google-to-print-money (too much?). Turns out you actually have a lot of control over the whole system. You can choose to target your whole site or just specific sections or pages within your website. You can narrow these down by product categories, pages which contain certain words, or pages containing certain strings in their URL. And all of the above can be used as negatives to prevent any mishaps.
How do you know what happens when you’re not watching?
You have access to full reporting on all the searches that generated clicks, ad headlines that were dynamically generated, destination pages that matched ads, as well as all the usual suspects (CPC, clicks, impressions, conversions, etc). And you can optimise your campaign in all the old familiar places (the Joker, anyone?)
Does it work?
Google certainly says so. They have been doing limited testing with a handful of agencies and large campaigns. The majority of testers have seen a 5-10% increase in CTR and generally positive ROI. However, it seems to work a lot better for some than others. Google’s poster boy on this one is ApartmentHomeLiving.com (a US apartment shopping website). It has a large inventory of apartment listings which change on an hourly basis. Lawrence Cotter, the General Manager, stated:
Using Dynamic Search Ads increased conversions by almost 50% with an average cost-per-conversion that’s 73% less than our traditional search ads. Dynamic Search Ads are doing a really good job finding the right searches to tap into, creating good ads, and getting visitors to the most relevant page on our site.
Our thoughts?
This actually sounds awesome. I’m going to recommend several clients trial it immediately. The point about 16% of searches each day being completely new to Google hits home with me. You can never tell what some people are going to type into Google and if by using Dynamic Search Ads you can tap into ‘new’ relevant searches and show them the best possible ad to answer their questions… why the hell not?!