Leveraging Google AI for your business’ online objectives is useful for successful ad performance. Explore the key features and things to keep in mind when utilizing this tool.
Artificial Intelligence has been a foundational aspect of successful paid search campaigns for over 5 years. It includes features like automatically written copy, smart bidding, advanced bid strategies, and keyword creation and optimization; making the setup of paid search campaigns quick, efficient, and effective.
If you’ve been using automated bidding, you have already been using AI for a long time. The foundation of efficient and successful paid search ads is automated bidding, which allows you to take your hands off the wheel and let Google AI optimize your bidding to reach the right users at the right time. Google uses a practice called “auction-time bidding” which sets bids for each search based on the user’s device, location, time of day, and search terms. You can help AI help you by setting an automated bid strategy which will tell the AI what to optimize towards; a few options include maximize clicks, maximize conversions, maximize conversion value, target ROAS, etc.
While Google AI is certainly not the only AI tool in the world of paid search, it is the most commonly used and the most effective. The many features that Google has been developing and popularizing over the past few years have become staples in paid search marketing tactics.
At the simplest level, AI can generate headlines and descriptions for your ads based on your landing page. This maximizes efficiency for the advertiser, and can allow faster ad setup without the help of a copywriter. This works by scanning your landing page and analyzing the important highlights of the site, then providing possible copy options.
This is by no means a flawless system and reviewing provided copy is essential, but it is an excellent tool to save time writing ads and get campaigns live sooner. Once headlines and descriptions are reviewed and finalized, you can then opt in to “Automatically Created Assets”, which will allow Google AI to automatically create new copy based on what is already in use. This will not be on by default. Whether or not you opt in for these automatically created assets will depend on how much you trust Google to represent your brand and products appropriately. While the ease and efficiency of this option is tempting, you will need to be aware that your ads may end up with copy options that you or your client do not want.
In addition to ad copy, AI can help you generate keywords (Google AI’s Gemini chatbot is especially useful for this). Perhaps more importantly, however, Google AI is the foundation of paid search targeting. Google uses broad match, phrase match, and exact match terminology (which are set by you) to determine when ads should be delivered to users.
You can help Google AI by browsing through the searches that resulted in your ads being delivered and marking irrelevant searches as negative keywords. The more you filter through searches and add keywords and negative keywords, the more helpful AI technology will be for that campaign.
When Google AI scans your website, the keywords and headlines it generates will tell you what it thinks the page is about. If the copy it pulls doesn’t look like what you thought the website is about/should be about, AI might be helping you to see opportunities for content optimization.
Think of this like a stranger reading your website. It’s very easy for subject matter experts to think their website content is clearer to website visitors than it actually is. If AI-generated ad copy is focusing on concepts and keywords that are different from what you intend, revisit your website copy and structure and ask yourself, “why does Google think that?” Paying attention to site content hierarchy can help you to see things how Google sees them. Are your headlines and main concepts focused around your main keywords for that page? If not, you can adjust them to better align with your content strategy.
The more you tell Google AI about who you want to target, what the goal of the ads are, what the value of a conversion is to you, etc., the better AI can work toward your goals. After you’ve established your campaigns and are starting to see data, you’ll start to see recommendations in the Google Ads Recommendations tab about upgrading your bid strategy to more advanced ones like Target CPA (Cost Per Action) or Target ROAS (Return On Ad Spend). These can be very powerful strategies for increasing your campaigns effectiveness, but, like all things in AI, they will need your careful consideration and ongoing input to meet your objectives.
AI can take your ads to the next level, but only if you help it. The key to success is helping Google help you. You should know what conversions you are aiming for, what a conversion is worth to you, and what a relevant search would be.
Once you have decided these things, the AI tools available to help with paid search become far more effective. It is essential to continually test the AI by trying a variety of broad match, phrase match, and exact match keywords. Over time, these match type options have become increasingly smarter, but broad match will still bring in a handful of irrelevant searches.
AI is incredibly helpful, but it isn’t perfect. The most common issues you may run into are irrelevant copy and searches. To work around this issue, remember to treat AI as a tool; test things out, note what worked and didn’t work, and use that info to experiment with new tests. It is essential to remember that AI plus advertiser expertise will yield the best results.
Integrating AI into your daily workflow and marketing strategies can seem daunting. At Click Rain, we've been utilizing AI technology for years and have made it our mission to stay on the forefront. If you need help or are looking for a partner fluent in AI, drop us a message.
Levi Scott serves as a tactful Associate Media Strategist on the marketing crew at Click Rain to bring storytelling and analysis seamlessly into the fold for clients.
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