Google Ads: New Smart Campaigns and Ads Explained

With all of the new smart campaigns and ads showing up in our Google Ads accounts, it can be a lot to keep track of. When explaining these campaigns and ads to clients all at once, we have found it to cause confusion as to which placements they are on, which size images we’ll need for them and what requirements there are. There are four main types of new campaigns and ads we are referring to: Smart shopping, Discover ads, Gallery ads, and Responsive display ads. 

Below is a chart that outlines these new ad formats in a clear way to explain to clients and to avoid confusion ourselves:

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1. Discovery is a new type of campaign which allows you to advertise on YouTube, Gmail and the Discover feed. With Discovery ads, advertisers now have the ability to upload a single image or multiple images, headlines and descriptions that will use machine learning to serve on the best-performing placements. You have the option to create a carousel that will scroll with multiple images or a single image that will show on multiple ad placements. 

2. Gallery ads are in beta but are not yet available to all advertisers. This new ad format allows you to add images to your search ads. Advertisers need to upload at least 4 images and three headlines along with your final URL. You’ll be able to add this new ad format to your existing ad groups. 

3. Responsive Display Ads will replace standard display ads in our existing display campaigns. This ad format allows advertisers to upload multiple headlines, descriptions, images, logos and videos. The one major caveat - your image text cannot cover more than 20% of the image. These responsive display ads will show on the Google Display Network. 

4. Smart Shopping allows your ad to show on Google shopping, Google Display Network, YouTube and Gmail. In this campaign, you’ll need to upload one image and include one headline, description and long headline.

With the implementation of these new campaigns and ads, it’s important that we as advertisers are able to distinguish between them and understand the requirements. If we are able to take advantage of Google’s algorithm and understand these new opportunities, it will ultimately free up our time and make our accounts easier to manage in the future.