What is Adwords?
Adwords is a Google’s advertising service that allows you to promote your content, brand, website, etc through certain defined keywords to achieve traffic or leads. The ads are displayed on Google web pages (SERP) and partner websites (called publishers) for matching keywords.
What is Paid Search?
Your ads are shown on Search Results Page ( See picture below ) when a potential customer types on Google a search that matches one of your keywords.
What are Display Ads?
Google gives us the following definition for its display ads: “The Google Display Network can help you reach people while they’re browsing their favorite websites, showing a friend a YouTube video, checking their Gmail account, or using mobile devices and apps.”
Put simply, your display ads will show for potential customers that are interested in your products while they are browsing the internet.
But, how does Adwords let you target the people that ARE interested in your products?
There are actually two types of targeting when it comes to Google Display network:
- Contextual Targeting: ads show to users reading content relevant to your products or services. For example if you sell party dresses your ads will show on fashion blogs.
- Interests Targeting: ads show to users that are interested in your services.
Now that we know the difference between Search and Display Ads, a question pops up in our minds. How does Google determines which ads show first and in which frequency? The answer is: Auction.
When you advertise on Google, chances are many other competing businesses are also trying to show their ads on the same keywords. Google then triggers an auction that determines which gets the first positions.
Check out this infographic to understand better how Google Auction System works:
