Managing Discovery ads during uncertain times

As people spend more time at home, consumers are browsing their favorite personalized feeds for entertainment and the latest information on their favorite interests and topics. In these moments of brand and product discovery, it’s important that you pay attention to tone and make sure your message is helpful. Discovery campaigns are fully automated, meaning the creative and location of your ads will be dynamically adjusted in order to meet your goals - even in times of volatility. Here are some tips and tools to help marketers adapt to changing consumer behavior and ensure their Discovery campaigns are delivering the best results. 

Manage volatility by simplifying your campaign management

 

• Adjust campaign budgets as needed in response to business pressure (e.g. supply chain uncertainty, uncertain demand).
• A Target CPA bid strategy is recommended for Discovery campaigns to put you in control of your costs. You can view your recommended target CPA during campaign creation or by using the tCPA simulator. We recommend a minimum budget of 10x your target CPA.
• Use location targeting to focus on the areas where your business can help. This will make sure your ads aren’t showing up in locations where your supply chain is severely disrupted or you can’t currently do business. 
• Enable campaign-level conversions for your Discovery ads. By selecting the specific conversion actions that are the most valuable for your business (e.g. acquisitions) you can help the machine learning bidding model optimize to drive these results. 
• Move unused budget to the ads that need it the most using the “Move Unused Budget” recommendation. Expand campaigns with increased demand using the “Raise Budgets” recommendation in campaigns that are performing the best. Repeat every 1-2 weeks to ensure budget allocations are updated.

Adapt your creative to fit the moment

• Stay up to date on insights and trends. To identify real-time insights that are relevant to your business, use Google Trends to explore what’s top of mind for your customers and how you can adjust your ads to meet changing expectations. 
• Conduct a thorough creative review of your existing Discovery ads with the asset report. This will help you determine which assets are performing the best and allow you to focus creative optimization on “low” performing headlines, descriptions and images. 
• Review the Discovery ads creative guidelines to ensure your ads provide a high-quality consumer experience and are in line with our advertising policies and guidelines. 
• Check out our creative asset guide to learn how to build stunning ads that catch people's attention and get them to take action. Rework existing assets for the current context to drive the best results with your Discovery campaigns.  

Let Google help you find more customers.

• Analyze your current audience performance by using predefined reports. The Audience report can be quickly customized to assess the data that is most important for you (e.g. cost per conversion) and enable you to prioritize and expand your best performing audiences.
• Use audience expansion to reach new users that are predicted to give you the same or better conversion rates. Use similar audiences if you want more control over budget and creatives while finding new customers based on your first-party audiences. 
• Reach people who are actively searching for your product or service on Google using custom intent audiences. These are customers who have recently searched for specific keywords and have a high purchase intent. 
• Consider adding new prospecting audiences like in-market and custom affinity to your campaigns. If you’re changing business models or product offerings, these audience solutions can help you reach new customers based on their interests and research behavior.