PPC (pay-per-click advertising) campaigns rank amongst the important and profitable advertising tools to date. With the right strategy, you quickly connect with hundreds and thousands of people online.
There are different key strategies to make a PPC campaign work. An essential one of the lot is to effectively structure the ad groups in the campaign. An ad group is like your ad’s container filled up with a set of relevant keywords.
A commonly brought up concern on this subject is: how many ads should be implemented per ad group in order to get ideal results?
We’ll be diving into this topic today. Continue reading if you’re struggling with getting the optimal results from your PPC campaigns.
Let’s quickly brush the basics first.
What is Pay-Per-Click Advertising?
PPC or pay-per-click advertising is an online advertising approach through which businesses pay a fixed amount of money any time someone clicks on their respective ads.
You bid on phrases and keywords relevant to your business, and those that your users search online. Your ad placement depends on the relevancy of your keywords with ads, and your bidding amount.
High bid + high relevancy = higher ad placement
The ads cost relies on the kind of keywords you select. It also hinges on your ad’s quality, and the existing market competition.
For example, if you search ‘leather jackets in Omaha’ on Google, you’ll see different search results with the sponsored ads on the top. Contrary to the organic listings, these paid ads accompany the word ‘ad’ adjacent to the URL which indicates that it is a paid placement.
We have created a detailed guide on pay-per-click management services. Go through it and you’ll find answers to many of your buzzing questions.
Let’s come back to our pressing question now.
How Many Ads Should Be Implemented Per Ad Group?
For excellent results, Google suggests running at least 3 ads per each ad group. Ideally, anywhere between 3 and 5 ad groups is great. With 3 to 5 ads in every ad group, Google’s machine learning algorithms can easily test different ad variations, and figure out the effective ads.
Let’s take a look at how and why this strategy works.
Effective A/B Testing
More ads in a group allow you to test the different variations of descriptions, CTAs, headlines and display URLs.
With comparisons at your disposal, you can better figure out what your audience likes best. Once you are aware of your audience’s preferences, you can fine-tune your messaging to maximize your results.
AD Rotation Results in Optimized Performance
Ad platforms, particularly Google Ads, test ads lying in an ad group in rotation. Rotation allows it to check the CTR (click-through rates) of ads, and then prioritize those with high CTRS.
Google Ads also uses other metrics to measure the performance of rotating ads such as conversions. Ad rotation is a viable strategy to target more of your budget on high-performing ad visuals.
Prevention of Ad Fatigue
Your audience, no matter what niche they belong to, wants something new every time. Yes, even in ads. If you run one or at the most two ads repeatedly, the odds of your audience suffering from ad fatigue are high.
Ad fatigue is when an audience sees the same ad over and over again. Repeated exposure makes them quite familiar with that ad. Consequently, they lose interest in it which declines the ad’s performance. The campaign’s CTR and engagement rates drop, and its overall effectiveness weakens as well.
Ads run without any variations on digital advertising platforms such as Instagram, Google Ads and Facebook often experience ad fatigue.
You surely don’t want this to happen to your ad, right? For that, always introduce 3 to 5 ad variations. Your audience stays engaged, gets variety, and is less likely to go through banner blindness. This is when users unconsciously ignore display ads as they have seen them repeatedly.
Higher Quality Score
Quality score is an important metric to check an ad’s performance in Google Ads. Important factors that determine the quality score include the landing page experience, expected CTR and ad relevance to the targeted keywords.
A high quality score indicates the following:
- Users are interacting well with the ad’s landing page
- Your targeted keywords are relevant to your ads
- And the CTR is high
Inversely, a low quality score means the three metrics above are not optimized. High quality scores result in low CPC (cost-per-click) and higher ad positions.
When you run multiple ads in an ad group, you can best refine your messaging considering the different kinds of user intent tied to different search queries. More variety means your chances of finding and delivering the ideal message at the ideal time increase. Automatically, your ad relevance increases as well.
Soon enough, Google’s algorithms start to positively rate your particular ad which improves its quality score.
Broader Coverage of Diverse Demographics
Variety of ad creative allows you to better target diverse audience segments. Every audience segment has multiple, different customer personas.
When they see different types of ads, they respond a little differently to each one of them. Their interaction with the ad’s design, visuals, CTA (call-to-action) and messaging varies.
Having more than 3 ads in the Google Ads campaigns helps you improve your likelihood of better engaging with these segments. You get a broader engagement, targeting different demographics in an audience segment.
Consequently, your ad reach and performance maximizes as well. Additionally, this approach also allows you to figure out your niche audience within a particular audience segment.
For instance, you may be targeting girls and women between the ages of 15 and 40 for the jewelry and accessories you sell. When you target different demographics with your ad variations, you may figure out that those between 25 and 35 love the belts you offer more. That group then becomes your niche audience, helping you target that group for that respective product.
Campaign Customization for Seasonal Trends
Adapting to different seasonal trends is crucial to optimize your ad’s performance. Running various ads simultaneously allows you to do that easily.
With several ads running in an ad group, you have extra flexibility to quickly tweak your messaging according to a certain market or seasonal trend. For instance, you have 4 ads featuring your store’s ongoing promotion. You realize you haven’t covered anything on Christmas, so you adjust an ad’s copy and visual according to the festive season.
Adaptability of this kind diversifies your ads, making each variation more relevant to a certain customer segment. You can better address multiple customer intents, be it browsing for relevant information or looking for instant deals.
Do’s and Don’ts of Running Multiple Ads in an Ad Group
Now that you know running 3 to 5 ads per ad group is beneficial, let’s look at some do’s and don’ts of implementing multiple ads in one ad group.
Do’s of Managing Multiple Ads in an Ad Group
Some of the best practices to effectively manage all your ads running in an ad group include the following:
Utilize RSAs (Responsive Search Ads)
One of Google’s best practices for running numerous ads in a single ad group is to use the RSAs (responsive search ads.) It lets you add several headlines with descriptions.
The search engine’s machine learning automatically mixes and matches different combinations to come up with ads relevant to the user’s unique search query.
RSAs help you create more personalized ads and optimize them. With this strategy, you get different ads appealing to a wider range of audiences.
Ads and Keywords Should Relate
Make it a must to align every ad in each ad group with the set of targeted keywords. Ads that are closest to the keywords appear better to your searchers. Hence, the ad’s quality score improves.
A higher quality score means a lower CPC. Relevance is indeed critical to achieve excellent ad performance in a campaign. Make sure to prioritize that.
Regularly Monitor the Ad’s Performance
Performance evaluation is a must when running a PPC campaign. Assess every ad and its performance individually, and on a daily basis.
In case some ads underperform, it is best to pause them for some time. Use this time to identify the areas of improvement in those ads. At the same time, optimize the high-performing ads.
Ongoing optimization helps you keep your campaigns affordable and efficient, so you get good bang for your buck.
Focus on Quality Not Quantity
Structuring 3 to 5 ads in an ad group works quite well. That said, avoid overloading the ads. This is when you run too many ads in a single ad group.
Overloading ads is a big NO. a tad too many ads only overwhelm the platform’s algorithm. It also makes it tough for you to effectively track the ads’ performance.
Your emphasis should lie on creating 3 to 5 top-notch ads rather than having myriads of poor quality ads that don’t deliver desired results.
Don’ts of Managing Multiple Ads in an Ad Group
While following the best practices, also observe care to avoid doing the following.
Running Only A Few Ads
Limiting ad variations keeps you from effectively testing as well as optimizing the ads.
When you have just an ad or two, you start missing out on tons of valuable data that could potentially elevate your campaign’s stats and performance.
Any time you have to run an ad campaign, have a minimum of 3 ads.
Adding Off-Topic Ads in an Ad Group
Placing ads that target unrelated or different keywords in an ad group dilutes their effectiveness and relevance.
Naturally, your CTRS starts to drop low, and so does your quality score. Make sure that all the ads running in an ad group follow a similar keyword focus and theme.
Not Updating Weak Ads
Oftentimes, we neglect to update ads that aren’t performing well. Doing so not only affects the campaign’s effectiveness, but also wastes the ad budget too.
Ensure to regularly review all your ads, and then optimize them. Your ads stay fresh, relevant, and optimized according to your goals.
Conclusion
Running powerful PPC campaigns may seem a little tricky, but it is doable. By taking care of certain things such as running and optimizing 3 to 5 ads in an ad group, you can improve the quality of your results.
To ensure that happens, choose an expert pay per click advertising company in Omaha, NE.
FAQs
- What is the ideal number of ad groups in a campaign?
Ideally, 3 to 5 ad groups per campaign is perfect. However, some experts also recommend running 3 to 10 ad groups in every campaign to have more segmentation and target more keywords.
- How many ad groups are too many in an ad campaign?
More than 10 ad groups is too many for an ad campaign. 3 to 5 is the ideal number for ad groups in an ad campaign. Some even suggest it to be 3 to 10 so more than 10 ad groups is too many.
- What is the number of response search ads in School4SEO that Google Ads allows?
Google Ads allows 3 enabled responsive search ads in every ad group at the best.
- What is the character limit for the RSAs (responsive search ads)?
You can add up to 15 headlines with each having 30 characters at the most, and a maximum of 4 descriptions with each having 90 characters at the most in RSAs.
