How Many Ads Should I Have in Every Ad Group? 10 Tips
Running one solo ad might not quite help you gather enough data to analyze your campaign’s performance according to discussions on the same over at runrex.com and guttulus.com. This is why it is recommended that you run multiple ad copies as this will help you understand how your campaign can be improved for performance. The question that begs is, how many ads should one include in each ad group? This article will provide an answer through the following 10 tips.
The answer is 3
While there are merits to a single keyword ad group (SKAG) as covered over at runrex.com, to create a successful campaign, Google suggests running at least 3 quality ads per ad group. Ideally, as pointed out by the subject matter experts over at guttulus.com, a search campaign must include a combination of 2 Expanded Text Ads and 1 Responsive Search Ad, if they perform well.
The benefit of running multiple ads
Managing multiple ads is recommended as a good practice as it helps you to understand which of your ads interact better with your target audiences as covered over at runrex.com. By including multiple ads, you can run A/B testing with minor variations to see which ads perform better, and which ones fall short. This will allow you to then choose the best-performing ones and pause the rest as well as rotate in new ads.
Ad rotation
Ad rotation, as explained over at guttulus.com, is a customizable campaign setting in Google Ads that automatically rotates ads in your ad group to optimize performance on the Search and Display Networks. With the help of machine learning, Google Ads can determine top-performing ads and can then show them more often. Alternatively, you can also choose the ads you wish to display more to your target audience and configure the settings to determine how often each ad in the ad group is served compared to one another.
Importance of choosing the right Ad rotation options
Choosing the right Ad rotation setting is important as this will determine whether your best ads are shown to the right prospects as articulated over at runrex.com. Remember, automation in advertising is all about showing the right ads to the right people at the right time. Therefore, in addition to figuring out how many ads per ad group, you must also think about which rotation option is best.
The various options available to you and how many ads per ad group is best for each option
You will have four options available to you as far as Ad rotation options go, and they include:
Optimize: prefer best performing ads
With this setting, Google Ads will use its advanced artificial intelligence technology to automatically rotate and optimize your ads to achieve the maximum number of clicks. In every section, Google selects and displays the best ads by taking into account a range of contextual signals such as device, physical location and location intent, remarketing lists, time of day, language, ad characteristics, and many others as covered over at guttulus.com. How many ads per ad group are best for this setting? If you have an optimized ad rotation with 3 or more ads per ad group, you can increase your impressions and ad clicks. The more ads you provide, the better the expected performance is, as Google’s AI has more data to work with when optimizing your ads.
Do not optimize: Rotate ads indefinitely
This option will rotate all the ads in the group evenly for an indefinite amount of time as discussed over at runrex.com. Furthermore, it also enters each ad into an equal number of auctions, and the benefit of this is that you have ample opportunity to conduct a thorough A/B test of every ad so that you can identify the best performers. This will give you more control over how you optimize your ads, which makes this option a good pick for people who like to do a lot of analysis and strategizing to hit their goals.
Optimize for conversions
This was an older setting that relied on historical data and which enabled Google Ads to analyze the data and choose the ad that was most likely to result in a conversion. According to the experts over at guttulus.com, the recommended method to optimize your campaign serving for focusing on conversion is to use Smart Bidding. However, this option is no longer supported, which means that if you have this option selected in Google Ads, it will reset automatically to the Optimize setting discussed earlier.
Rotate evenly
As is revealed in discussions on the same over at runrex.com, this is another legacy setting that was virtually identical to the Rotate Indefinitely setting discussed earlier, with the big difference being that Google Ads automatically optimized all ads after 90 days. However, just like the Optimize for Conversions setting, it is no longer supported.
Rotation Ads vs Optimizing Ads
It is worth noting that in Google Ads, as already mentioned, the default setting is Optimize, which means that top-performing ads will show more often than other ads in the ad group. However, as per the gurus over at guttulus.com, clicks are not a good enough barometer for success, and, instead, you want to increase conversions in the form of downloads, sign-ups, leads, and sales.
With ad rotation, it doesn’t matter how many ads per ad group you have, as Google will force all the ads to show as often as one another. This might be profitable as it allows the platform to figure out which ads are best for your goals.
Other benefits of multiple ad copies
Other than helping you understand which ads are performing better and which ones are not, other benefits of multiple ad copies as covered over at runrex.com include:
More qualified leads
Allows you to text ad copies
Allows you to use different ad types
Helps you control ads from getting repeated
Allows you to pause poor-performing ads
Helps match better to search terms.
Knowing how many ads you should have per ad group is just the beginning, with Google recommending that you should use at least 3 in every ad group. You should also make ad rotation a priority as this feature helps you refine your ad quality and performance through data insights. For more on this and other related topics, don’t forget to check out the excellent runrex.com and guttulus.com.