How Smart campaigns work

Google Ads Smart campaigns | What are Smart campaigns?

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If you want to learn more about how to optimize your campaigns, review our resources to discover new opportunities online. In Advertising for Small Businesses, Google Ads experts provide best practices for Smart campaigns.
  • Smart campaigns help you highlight selling points of your business and attract customers.
  • You can create a single campaign for your business, or run multiple campaigns to showcase different products or services your business offers, each with their own set of keyword themes.

How ads work

When you sign up for a Smart campaign, you’ll write an ad that describes your business. You’ll also choose which keyword themes you want to target your ad and set a budget. Your ad will automatically show to potential customers across Google Search, Google Maps, YouTube, Gmail, and Google partner websites.

Your ad can show when potential customers in your geographic area search for phrases related to your business on Google or Google Maps. Your ad can also show for customers who are outside of your neighborhood, but who include terms related to your business as well as your business location in their searches.

How your ads appear

Ad www.example.com/insurance

Comprehensive Insurance | Protect Yourself on a Budget | Get Your Free Quote Today

Get affordable & trustworthy insurance. 10% discount on all online quotes. Easily compare insurance plans side-by-side in just a few seconds.

Your ad consists of the following parts:

Name Description
Headline

Your headline is the blue text at the top of the ad. When customers click the ad headline, they'll be taken to the website that you’ve entered for your business. You can write between 3 and 15 headlines for your ad. Your headlines should have a maximum length of 30 characters (or 15 characters for double-width* languages).

Description

Showcase your business's main selling points by describing your products or services, or include a special offer for customers. You can write between 2 and 4 descriptions for your ad. Your descriptions should have a maximum length of 90 characters (or 45 characters for double-width* languages).

Destination URL (link)

Google displays the website URL of your business or Google Business Profile.

Business name Call ads have a limit of 25 characters for the business name. To help advertisers with business names longer than 25 characters, we will truncate their business name to 25 characters in order to serve Call ads.
Sitelinks

Sitelinks are links generated by Google AI that appear below your ad text. These links send potential customers to pages on your website that are relevant to their searches. Learn more about sitelinks

Map pin A pin may appear in your ad for customers located near your business. If your customer clicks the pin, they'll be taken to your business location on Google Maps (requires Smart campaign to be linked to a Business Profile).
Phone number

If you enter a phone number, it will be displayed in your mobile search ad, desktop search ad, Google Display Network ad and Google Maps ad. In order for it to appear, you may need to verify ownership of your phone number.

If you use call reporting, you'll still need to verify ownership of your actual phone number in order to display the unique Google forwarding number used in your ads.

Address

If you'd like to show your business address, your Google Ads account needs to be linked to a Business Profile to display the address managed in that account.

* Double-width languages are languages that use double-width characters, like Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

Create multiple campaigns for a single business

If you want to advertise different aspects of your business, you can create multiple Smart campaigns for your business, and specify different keyword themes and budgets for each. For example, a bakery might want to create a general “bakery” campaign, but create an additional campaign for “wedding cakes”. Each of these can have different keyword themes, budgets, and targeting.

Alternate ads

To help your ad attract more customers and receive more clicks, the information you've provided about your business and the content in your website is used to create and test alternate ads. In some cases, this information may be used to test different combinations of headlines, descriptions, and landing pages. It may also be used to add sitelinks or replace your headlines with your business name, phone number, or address.

Both the original ad and the new ads will run to determine which are more effective. Ads that perform better consistently will run more often over time.

 

Sign up for Smart campaigns

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