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PPC Campaign Structure and Ad Targeting

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Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

Google Ads campaign

A Google Ads campaign is a collection of one or more ad groups, and each ad group can contain one or more keywords you want to advertise on. Any ad group can also have one or more ads that are shown whenever your keyword is searched for in Google. As a rule, it's wise to keep your ad groups tight, with not too many keywords per ad group. This allows you to craft targeted ads and send traffic to the best possible page on your website. 

If your ad group is too broad, your ads might not be optimally relevant for all keywords, and the landing page your ad links to might not be the most relevant page on your website. 

Campaign targeting

Google Ads allows you to target a campaign to specific devices, like desktop computers, tablets, or smartphones. Google Ads also allows you to adjust your bids and ads for different devices. 

You can also target your campaign by networks.

Geographic targeting

One of the most powerful features of Google Ads is its geographic targeting. You can target your campaign for specific areas, as big as continents or as small as individual postcodes. This allows you to target your ads very accurately to the best possible audience. 

Language targeting

You can also target specific languages in Google Ads, for example, a French-speaking audience in Switzerland, and make sure your ads are not shown for German-speaking users in the same country. 

Ad group targeting

With ad group targeting, you can target based on:

  • Broad matches
  • Phrase matches
  • Exact matches

So how do paid search ads relate to the keywords in an ad group:

  • Ads are shown when the search query matches the keyword in an ad.
  • The position of the ad is determined by a live auction based on every advertiser’s maximum bid.

Example: Boohoo 

Brands can recognize huge gains simply by restructuring their Google Ads account to incorporate the latest best practices. 
UK clothing company Boohoo began with a full audit of their account, tightening up the structure and focusing their targeting on the terms that were most likely to result in a sale. They then started to build the account back up, building everything in an extremely tight structure that helped to improve the quality score and increased relevancy between search term, keyword, ad, and landing page.
As Boohoo’s business grew, they adapted their strategies. They expanded the accounts to cover Menswear, Plus Size, Petite, and Gymwear ranges, as they were introduced over the years. They also extended the campaigns internationally as Boohoo’s reach increased.
Boohoo consistently saw very strong growth in both revenue and return on investment (ROI). In fact, ROI increased by 139%!

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Cathal Melinn

Cathal Melinn is a well-known Digital Marketing Director, commercial analyst, and eommerce specialist with over 15 years’ experience.

Cathal is a respected international conference speaker, course lecturer, and digital trainer. He specializes in driving complete understanding from students across a number of digital marketing disciplines including: paid and organic search (PPC and SEO), analytics, strategy and planning, social media, reporting, and optimization. Cathal works with digital professionals in over 80 countries and teaches at all levels of experience from beginner to advanced.

Alongside his training and course work, Cathal runs his own digital marketing agency and is considered an analytics and revenue-generating guru - at enterprise level. He has extensive local and international experience working with top B2B and B2C brands across multiple industries.

Over his career, Cathal has worked client-side too, with digital marketing agencies and media owners, for brands including HSBC, Amazon, Apple, Red Bull, Dell, Vodafone, Compare the Market, Aer Lingus, and Expedia.

He can be reached on LinkedIn here.

ABOUT THIS DIGITAL MARKETING MODULE

Managing Paid Search Campaigns
Cathal Melinn
Skills Expert

Search expert Cathal Melinn focuses on the day-to-day operational challenges of managing a PPC budget while optimizing paid search campaign performance and using tools and techniques to measure and report on the effectiveness of PPC campaigns. You’ll learn about quality score and how ad rank and quality score can impact the final cost-per-click. You will cover automated and manual bidding, bid adjustments, remarketing lists, and using key tools such as Google Ads Experiments and Google Ads Editor as well as creating Google Shopping campaigns. You will conclude by covering tactics and techniques for measuring and reporting on paid search campaigns using tools such as Google Ads, Google Tag Manager, and Google Analytics. Cathal also covers the methods used to track non-Google search campaigns.