Have you looked in your AdWords toolbox lately?
With all of fun features available, you may have missed that Gmail Ads are now available within the AdWords platform to all advertisers!
Running ads in Gmail used to require accessing a separate platform, but now it’s incorporated into AdWords making it easier to manage within a familiar framework.
Gmail Ads are a type of Display Campaign, and like Display it comes with a bunch of powerful targeting options and ad types.
Targeting Methods
Gmail Ads can target users based on: keywords, topics, affinity audiences, and demographics.
While there isn’t an option for remarketing, the workaround is to use your domain (or a competitor’s domain) as a keyword.
Ad Types
The initial Gmail Ad that a user sees is collapsed at the top of their account page, and after the click there are few different ad types that can be used.
Like Display Ads, AdWords offers a Gmail Ad template gallery and ad options including:
- Image ads
- Images with call-to-action ads
- Multi product ads
- Standard HTML ad uploads
- HTML for embedding YouTube videos or forms
- Links to websites, apps, or click-to-call
Advertisers aren’t charged unless the user clicks on the collapsed ad and it expands. Once it is open, Gmail users also have the option to forward it or save it to their inbox.
Features We Know
Now that Gmail Ads are within the AdWords interface, we also get to use the standard goodies like scheduling ads, day parting, and bid adjustments for locations and devices.
Should You Give it a Go?
Since Gmail Ads are newish out of beta, there aren’t a lot of “smaller” advertisers and the CPC is on the low side.
But as with any new product or platform, think about your campaign goals and the type of users you are trying to target before jumping in.
