Google Ads is Google's advertising platform. It covers far more than the text ads above search results, and choosing the wrong campaign type is one of the most expensive mistakes a new advertiser makes.
What is SEA, and where does Google Ads fit?
SEA stands for search engine advertising: paid placement in search engines. Search ads in Google Ads are one form of it. Other search engines sell advertising too, for example through Microsoft Advertising, and Google Ads also covers advertising outside the classic search results.
SEM, search engine marketing, is the umbrella over SEA and SEO. Social ads are paid media as well, but they are not SEA in the narrow sense: they are targeted by audience and platform signals in social networks rather than by a search.
SEO and SEA do different jobs
SEO improves the conditions for visibility in unpaid search results. SEA uses paid ads. Which combination makes sense depends on demand, competition, budget, the offer and what can be measured. Either way, the website needs a fitting landing page and a clear next step.
Search ads can be visible quickly, and region and budget are easy to limit. The paid traffic largely stops when the budget or the campaign does; customers won, better landing pages and what the search terms taught you carry on. The longer comparison is SEO vs SEA; our services are described under Google Ads agency and SEO agency.
The campaign types
Search
Text ads on results pages, triggered by queries. The highest intent available: someone is actively looking. Usually where a business should start.
Shopping
Product listings with image, price and merchant, driven by a product feed rather than keywords. Essential for online stores, and performance is decided almost entirely by feed quality.
Display
Banner ads across millions of sites. Cheap per impression, low intent. Useful for remarketing to previous visitors, frequently disappointing for finding new customers.
Video
Ads on YouTube. Good for reach and demonstration, harder to tie to direct response.
Performance Max
Google distributes across all inventory automatically using your assets and goals. Convenient, and much less transparent — you get limited visibility into where spend went and less control when it goes wrong.
Demand Gen
Visual campaigns across YouTube, Discover and Gmail, aimed at interest rather than active search.
Keyword match types
Broad shows your ad for anything Google considers related. Widest reach, weakest control, needs disciplined negatives.
Phrase requires the meaning of your phrase to be present.
Exact matches the term and close variants. Most control, least volume.
Negative keywords exclude terms. These matter as much as the keywords you bid on, and neglecting them is the most common way budget disappears.
Quality Score
Google rates expected click-through rate, ad relevance and landing page experience. A higher score can mean better positions at lower cost.
This is why relevance beats bidding: three tightly themed ad groups usually outperform one broad group at the same budget.
Settings that quietly cost money
- Search Partners and Display expansion enabled by default on some campaign types, spending on placements you did not choose.
- Location targeting set to "presence or interest", which shows ads to people merely interested in your area rather than in it.
- Automated bidding without conversion data, which optimises toward nothing meaningful.
- No ad schedule, if your business cannot answer enquiries at 3am.
Do we need a Google Ads certification?
No. The interface is usable. The difficulty is judgement about structure, negatives and measurement, not clicking the buttons.
Should we use Performance Max?
It can work well for e-commerce with a strong feed. For lead generation with limited data it often produces volume of poor quality. Start with Search.
Who owns the account?
You should. Insist that the account is created under your ownership, with an agency given access rather than possession. Otherwise you cannot leave with your own history.