Why Paid Media Account Structure is So Important

Do you remember the last ad you clicked on? In a world of unlimited choices, only the most relevant ad earns your click. We as marketing professionals pour so much time and effort into our creative, only for users to pass us by in a sea of options. We know we have what users are looking for, but if they aren’t clicking on our ads, how are we going to drive conversions and generate revenue? Further, how will we gather data that will allow us to improve our ads without insights into their performance? There’s a plethora of data available on which to base adjustments and make decisions in digital media- there are 8.5 billion Google searches per day, 15% of which are unique. To give our ads the best chance to stand out from the noise, it’s important we start with the basics.

The Google Ads Account Structure Framework

Let’s start with an overview of the way your Google paid media account is set up.

1. Account: This is where your business information such as billing, user permissions, and more are kept.
2. Campaign: Campaigns live in your Google Ads account and are how you will advertise your business solutions or offers throughout the Google network. Your campaigns are where your ad groups are housed.
3. Ad Group: Inside of your campaigns are your ad groups. Your ad groups are where keywords that you want to target with relevant ads will be housed.
4. Keyword: Keywords are found within your ad groups, and they determine how your ads will be displayed. When someone searches for something on Google that is relevant to your keywords, Google will display your ad. The best practice is to have 1 to 20 tightly themed keywords within each ad group.
5. Ads:This is the text copy or other creative (image, graphic, video, etc) that Google will display when the keywords you are targeting are relevant to a search query. It is good practice to have two to three ads per ad group to test for optimization.
6. Landing Page:When someone clicks on your ad this is the page that Google will send them to. Each ad group can only have one landing page. The best practice is to align your landing page to the search query intent.

Other Important Terms

Search Query: word or phrase a user types into search box. Ad Rank: value used to determine where ads are shown on a page relative to other ads. Ad rank = quality score * bid

Why is Google Ads Account Structure Important?

Google wants to provide users the best possible experience, which means that Google wants to show a user the most relevant ad possible. The better aligned your ads are to a search query, the higher the likelihood of it appearing and getting clicks: clicks that generate revenue for Google (since you pay per click) and you (because a click is a predecessor to a conversion). Your ad relevance is highly impacted by your account structure. How you organize your campaigns, ad groups, keywords, ads, and landing pages will help Google understand themes in your account. This makes it easy to serve your ads to the right audience and customize ads to better reflect the audience’s search queries.

How Does Account Structure Impact User Experience?

Below is an example of what can happen if we structure our account incorrectly. With only one campaign and ad group, a plethora of search queries result in an ad that is likely not relevant to the respective query. When a searcher’s inquiry results in an ad that doesn’t seem relevant to their query, it creates friction in the user’s mind which is less likely to result in a click. How the correct account structure creates a seamless user experience: As you can see, the ad copy above is reflective of what the user searches, which signals to them that we can provide a solution to their problem, increasing the likelihood that they will click on our ad.

What is Quality Score & How Does Account Structure Impact It?

Quality score is a metric that Google provides that rates your ad on a scale of 1-10. The higher your quality score, the more relevant your ad is to the intent of what someone is searching for compared to other advertisers competing for the same keyword. To determine ad rank, Google multiplies your bid by the quality score of your ad. The ad rank determines the position on the page, and the ad in the 1st position is more likely to receive a click than ads lower on the page. Therefore, having a high quality score impacts the ad’s position on the page, and how much you pay to be in that position. The factors that impact quality score are ad relevance, expected clickthrough rate, and landing page experience. As previously discussed, improving ad relevance and landing page experience is much easier when account structure is properly set up, because it allows you to create tighter ad copy and choose the most specific and relevant landing page for each individual ad. Ultimately, optimizing your quality score means you’ll spend less on your advertising efforts because improving quality score is a way to improve ad rank without having to increase bids.

How Does Account Structure Help with Account Management?

Having an account that is not structured well decreases the control you have over your account which can slow you down and prevent you from optimizing your account based on business needs. It can also cause you to spend your budget in ways that are not efficient. When you can easily navigate your account, you can more quickly distinguish and evaluate relevant data and make decisions based on that data. Those decisions can be anything from where to increase or decrease budget, which areas of the business are bringing in the most paid revenue, or where keywords need to be added or removed. By setting your account up in a way that is logical, all decisions following are more likely to be based on logic, enabling you to efficiently get the best results. Want to know more? Read our tips for writing compelling PPC ad copy, 13 best practices for ppc campaigns, and how our work to restructure their paid media account increased leads by 11800% (not a typo) for a B2B in the energy industry. Like what you read? Contact us to talk about how you can get an Unfair Advantage for your business, including paid advertising best practices, and more!