Existing Dynamic Search Ad campaigns may be eligible to upgrade to Performance Max, bringing you additional inventory and formats to reach new customers. Advertisers who upgrade DSA campaigns to Performance Max see an average increase of over 15% in conversions or conversion value at a similar cost per action (CPA) or return on ad spend (ROAS). Learn how to Upgrade Dynamic Search Ads to Performance Max (Beta).
Increasing your reach without keywords, targeting for Dynamic Search Ads works by matching people’s searches on Google with specific pages on your site. You’re in control of how this targeting works. You can target your ads based on individual web pages, specific groups of pages, or target all of the pages on your website. You can also create block pages using dynamic ad target exclusions, or add negative keywords to avoid showing your ads on specific searches.
Before you begin
The methods described in this article have to do with targeting pages of your website that are indexed by Google. If your website is new to Dynamic Search Ads, it may take up to 24 hours for the targets to start serving.
To learn how Dynamic Search Ads work, start with About Dynamic Search Ads. To start creating Dynamic Search Ads, go to Create Dynamic Search Ads.
Best practices for targeting
Create dynamic ad targets that are more broadly defined to help increase your incremental traffic. If you create a target with too few indexed landing pages, your ads might not get any incremental traffic.
Dynamic Search Ads work best with well optimized pages where DSAs can identify themes and terms on the web page. Check out these Dynamic Search Ads optimization best practices.
You can save more time by using Dynamic Search Ads in combination with automated bidding. Dynamic Search Ad targets can be broad and traffic may vary for each target, so automated bidding improves performance by taking into account a variety of performance signals.
Creating exclusions for pages that contain words like "sold out" or "unavailable” is strongly recommended. This will prevent customers from viewing pages on your website that contain products they won't be able to buy. To learn how, go to Create exclusions and negative targeting for Dynamic Search Ads.
Instructions to create targets
After you've created a Dynamic ad group, you can add dynamic ad targets. To do so:
- In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon
.
- Click the Audiences, keywords, and content drop down in the section menu.
- Click Dynamic ad targets.
- Click the plus button
then click Select an ad group.
- Choose a campaign, and then select an ad group from that campaign.
- To target using categories, click Categories recommended for your website, and then select the check boxes next to any of the categories you want to use as dynamic ad targets. This targeting type is only available for domains for which Google Ads can generate categories. If your website is new to Dynamic Search Ads, it may take up to 48 hours for categories to be available in your account.
- To target specific webpages, click Specific webpages. You can choose to target exact URLs or create rules to target webpages based on page title, category, or URL content. It may take up to 24 hours for this targeting to take effect.
- To target all webpages on your website, click All webpages and then select the check box next to “All webpages.” It may take up to 24 hours for this targeting to take effect.
- If you’re targeting page feeds, you can also target a
custom label. To do this, click Custom labels from the feed, enter your custom labels, and then click Add after each one.
- Click Save to save your dynamic ad targets.
Optimize your campaign as you create it
As you create your campaign, you may receive notifications based on your setting selections. These notifications may alert you of issues that can result in decreased performance or that may be significant enough to prevent you from publishing your campaign.
The campaign construction navigation menu that appears as you construct your campaign provides a holistic view of your construction progress and will call attention to notifications that you may want to address. Move between steps in the navigation menu to easily review and resolve potential issues with your targeting, bidding, budget, or other campaign settings. Learn how to Set up your campaign for success.