Module 3 - Setting up campaigns

Where do you find campaigns in the ads interface?

The campaign types only show in the left hand menu once you have created a campaign. If you have not set any campaigns up yet, you will not see search, display, video or discovery there, because they will not appear in that side of the menu until you create a campaign. So do not worry if you cannot see these like I can.

When you go into your campaign list and you have got something blank, you will just have add a campaign, and then new campaign.

Which campaign type should you choose?

Choose video, then custom. At that point I can choose to create a campaign in any different section of Google Ads. If I create a campaign without any guidance, I can now choose: is it search, is it display, is it shopping, is it video, discovery, local, smart, or an app campaign?

As we are teaching Google Ads, and YouTube ads particularly, have a look at video. You click video and then you have got the options: custom, video, non-skippable, in-stream, out-stream, drive conversions, ad sequence, and shopping. There is a whole other piece on ad sequence, which is a really interesting way to run your ads.

Most of the time we will usually start with custom, because a lot of the other stuff within Google Ads is off the shelf, and why you are here, hopefully, is to learn the more advanced ways to do this. So we are going to choose custom and continue.

Then you are going to give the campaign a name. I have said this many times throughout the course: please give it a name that actually means something, a name that you will be able to refer back to. So, custom video campaign, goal to drive website visits.

Why start with cost per view instead of target CPM?

Because Google has no data on your account yet, so target CPM is not available to you however tempting it is. If you are just starting out you have got cost per view, max cost per view, or target CPM. Starting out, you are not going to be able to go for target CPM, because Google has not got any data at the moment. It will give you a suggested target cost of acquisition or cost per thousand.

I always like cost per view, and to work your way up, purely because if you set a low cost per view and you get traction, you get into places you otherwise would not.

This month we are about to see Google and YouTube releasing ads into the entire estate of YouTube. As we have got a helicopter going over, but anyway. YouTube are about to allow Google to serve ads across the entirety of YouTube, and up to now it has really only been the monetised videos within YouTube that have had ads within them. We are now going to see ads coming through into the entirety of that space, which is a massive amount of ad collateral and ad space to be used up.

So cost per view is an incredible strategy, purely because it is allowing you to get into the areas of YouTube where you probably would not have seen ads before. There is going to be so much space available over the next 12 to 18 months that with cost per view, if you keep it low and slowly work it up, you should be able to get your ads to serve into some really good videos and hit the right people. Cost per view is the way forward.

How should you set the budget and the networks?

Use a campaign total if you are only spending a small amount overall, and a daily budget otherwise. If you are just looking to spend two or three hundred dollars, run it on a campaign total, otherwise set it on a daily budget. Let us say I am going to set this one on 50 euros a day, with a start and end date.

Then, where do you want to serve? YouTube search results, yes. YouTube videos, yes. Partners on the display network, probably not, because that will start serving videos up into areas of the app store and the web universe where there are all sorts of placements out there that do not necessarily work. So always start out with YouTube search results and YouTube videos. It is going to work far more effectively for you.

Choose the country where you want these ads serving. I know for this particular advertiser these are the countries they run into. Languages, English in this case.

If we are going to look to exclude certain types of content, I always like to get rid of content not yet labelled. The rest of it is okay. You could get rid of live stream, but are people going to click through from a live stream? I would say probably not, because they are there for a reason.

Which devices, frequencies and schedules work best?

I very often get rid of TV and tablet, because they do not seem to work anywhere near as well as computer and mobile. There are some additional settings in here, and your conversion settings, and most of this is talked about in other parts of the course.

You could have a computer, desktop and browser campaign for websites, and a mobile phone and app campaign, as a separate campaign. Separating them out can be a good idea, although obviously in your reporting you can see where your conversions are coming from anyway. You can also choose different operating systems and certain devices, so you could have a campaign that just ran to people with an iPhone 12, for example, and you can choose the mobile networks that people are on.

On frequency capping, I always like to cap the frequency and find out where it sits best. Let us say we are going to cap this at 10 impressions per day per user, and a view rate of two per day, so we are not going to let anybody watch that video more than twice a day. I often end up setting that at two a week. It depends what the product is and how hard you are pushing it.

On schedule, I like to split this up into different times of the day. You might say we are going to exclude weekends, so let us just run Mondays to Fridays, and we are only going to run in the afternoons. On this particular one, let us say 1pm to 6pm, in good working hours.

Be careful on the time based settings, though. Make sure you get your time right. I have seen campaigns that people are running in the States where they have got it on GMT, and actually the ads are running in the middle of the night. So just be careful that you get your account time set up correctly, especially if you are running abroad.

How should you name ad groups and set targeting?

Name the ad group after what is in it. This one is a networking business, and I am going to base it on keywords plus audiences, and the date that I have set it up, which is 24 May 2021.

On age, use whatever you know about where your conversions sit. If you do not know, do start dialling it right down. It is going to limit the number of impressions, but Google will give you an idea where you are going. This particular advertiser does not go into the lower age brackets, and equally not into the older ones, but we keep unknown, because the majority of the audience sits there. You will be able to see how unknown compares against the rest and see where the conversions are coming from. You can only use household income in the US.

Then you get into building your audiences, keywords, topics and placements.

Why build the campaign as a template?

Because you can copy a fully configured campaign as many times as you like and vary only the targeting. What I like to do when I am setting up campaigns like this is call this one template, so I can make copies of the campaign and add in topics, placements and audiences at a later date, and not set this campaign live.

Then scroll down to cost per view. I always like to start at two or three cents and see where it goes, see if it serves. You can always slowly increase as you go up, and that will give you better and better placements. What you have got to ask yourself is, do you get as many conversions from a placement that is costing 10 or 15 cents, or do you get three or four times the conversion rate from that placement compared with one that is being served at two, three or four cents? That is a judgement you are going to have to take. Personally I like to start at the bottom and work my way up.

Then all you have got to do is add the videos you are going to work with. I can skip ad creation at this point, because I know I am setting this up as a template, and from the templated version I can copy it and add my individual ads into that.

At that point you are good. You have got a campaign, and it is a skippable in-stream campaign. If you do not know the difference between skippable in-stream and discovery, there is another module in the course. Save that and away you go.

You can then continue to the campaign, and there are the ad groups within it. If I go back to video campaigns, there is my template. At that point I can either pause or run that template, make copies of it, and add the placements and audiences within those copies, so that all of the basic settings, such as the conversion events, cost per view, budget, times of day and age groups, all the basic targeting, is done for me. I can just spin up copies, run various versions to test against each other, and split test as you go forward. Hopefully that is useful.