What is an Ad Group?

The term ad group is used to refer to all the ads pertinent to a particular set of keywords within a campaign. In this sense, it is quite an important component of PPC marketing and advertising. The primary purpose of an ad group is to organize your ads properly and arrange them based on a cohesive theme. For example, you can create ad groups based on the type of products or services - which will help you sort your ads better. 

How Does it Work? But how does an ad group work? 

Here’s how Google puts it: “An ad group contains one or more ads that share similar targets. You set a bid, or price, to be used when an ad group's keywords trigger an ad to appear. This is called a cost-per-click (CPC) bid. You can also set prices for individual keywords within the ad group.”

An ad group essentially works by indicating which ads to show for specific keyword searches to a search engine. Since it comprises in-depth information such as the content of your ads as well as where you want them to be linked, it gives the search engine very specific guidelines to operate within. 

What you can do is base your ad groups on the sections/categories that appear on your website. For example, if you’re a clothing business and you sell jackets, sweaters, and jeans, you can base your ad groups on these three categories. Then you can assign a list of certain keywords to each of these ad groups. For example, “high-waisted jeans”  “skinny jeans” etc., to the jeans ad group. These lists will then tell the search engine to show ads for these products only on websites related to these keywords!

Why is it Good for Your Business and Brand?

As mentioned earlier, ad groups are a quick and easy way of streamlining your ad campaign by dividing it into various themes. It also works well with search algorithms, since they know precisely where to place your ads and where they are likely to reach the right target audience. Ultimately, you use ad groups to save on costs while converting a considerably larger range of users. 

By creating an ad group, you are tying together all your content, keywords, and landing pages. An ad group, in this sense, is the perfect way to connect everything together and present a neat little package to potential customers. 

The Perfect Ad Group Structure

The benefits of using an ad group sound great, right? Well, to make the most out of an ad group, you need to ensure that you’re following the right structure. Stick with these practices and watch your ad group evolve: 

• Use a maximum of 5 keywords per ad group. In any case, you shouldn’t exceed 20 keywords for each list - but the simpler, the better. So, try to go for 5 keywords per list for every ad group. 
• Always have 2-3 ads in place to test them against each other. This provides a better insight into the performance. The ones that are performing poorly need to go, while the ones performing well serve as a template for future innovation to be built upon. 

Final Words

Ad groups are a straightforward way of organizing your ads and leveraging the search engine to work in your favor. By creating succinct ad groups that correlate to equally relevant keywords is essentially the foolproof way for you to present your client with a better experience, get more conversions, and evolve your PPC strategy.