How to Set Up and Optimize Google Discovery Campaigns

Google Discovery campaigns are changing the future of the way we advertise. They allow us to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) so that we can always stay one step ahead of our customers.

That’s why Google has been reorganizing many of its new ad products and features around its discovery theme. It has announced several releases and designed updates to reach customers not just when they’re searching for something, but also whenever they are open to trying out something new.

Google Discovery campaigns help you engage passive consumers, and attract qualified traffic at the top of the funnel. In this article, you’ll learn how to set up and optimize Google Discovery campaigns. Plus, you’ll explore how these ads can help you in reaching your potential customers more effectively.

What are Google Discovery Ads?

Google Discovery Ads are clickable visual ads that are mobile-optimized and leverage the power of searcher intent. Instead of relying on keywords, these ads take cues from the audience’s online activities such as site visits, app downloads, videos watched, and map searches.

Along with appearing within Google’s Discover feed on mobile and in-app, these ads also show up in Gmail ads, and YouTube Discover feeds.

How Do Google Discovery Ads Appear on Different Platforms?

Unlike traditional online ads, Google Discovery Ads look somewhat different depending on where they’re displayed.

Below is an image showing how these ads appear on different platforms:

YouTube Ads (left image shown above)

On YouTube, Google Discovery Ads appear on the “Discover” page in the platform’s current in-app setup. They look just like the standard Discovery ads but with a larger image, headline, and description.

Google Discovery ads on YouTube have the extra feature of a call-to-action (CTA) button, directing the audience to the next step. This functionality helps avoid misleading the audience into thinking they’ll be taken to a YouTube video when they are taken off the app.

Discover Feed (center image)

In the Discover feed, these ads are displayed as typical in-feed ads that you would see on other social networks with a large image, headline, and description.

Google is also expected to add swipeable gallery ads by the end of this year.

Gmail (right image)

Google Discovery ads show up as typical Gmail ads in Social and Promotion tabs and within email search.

What is Google Discover?

Google Discover is a feed that shows up on the homepage of Google’s iOS and Android app, in addition to the mobile version of Google homepage.

You can personalize your Discover feed to see content that’s relevant to you. In contrast to the Search Ads, you don’t have to enter any search query to see these Discover ads.

Google’s algorithm sorts people into audiences based on activity and shows ads pertinent to them as individuals.

Wondering what makes Google Discover different from conventional feeds?

Well, Google Discover keeps an eye on your learning journey and evolves with you. It shows you pertinent content that’s not only aligned with what you’re interested in at present but also what you might like in the future. Or, at least, that’s what it promises.

Google Discovery campaigns are based on one basic idea: Your audience is changing how they interact with the internet.

Earlier, the internet was just a vast combination of encyclopedia and yellow pages. Your customers might still be using it that way, but now they want more out of their online experiences.

Google claims the search behavior has undergone three fundamental shifts in recent years:

• From answers to journeys.
• From queries to the queryless.
• From the text-based to the visually-appealing.

Google Discover feed is developed to satisfy these varying anticipations of the internet. Rather than merely offering answers, it is designed to help your customers find what they need even when they aren’t able to articulate what they’re searching for at that time.

Now, it might feel somewhat terrifying to have a computer reverse-engineer you, but the whole thing works. When you interact with Google Discover, it determines what you’re interested in and offers you more of that content. This way, it puts your customers in a continuous web surfing discovery mode.

But, what benefit does it bring to you?

Unlike social platform feeds, where ads stray away from the real purpose, Google Discover ads help you get closer to your target audience. This is because when the audience is in discovery mode, they are more open to new ideas, concepts, products, and services. As a result, ‘discover’ is the perfect place for you to show up in front of your target customers.

When Should You Use Google Discovery Campaigns?

Before you jump on to try Google Discovery campaigns, let’s take a look at whether they are a good choice for you.

Go for Google Discovery Ads if you want to:

• Increase conversions with your ads at scale via a supported marketing goal – For instance, you can use these ads to increase sales, newsletter signups, or more site visits.
• Reach new consumers with your ads – For instance, you can drive interest from potential consumers when they are open to buying new products by sharing visually rich, appealing Discovery campaigns across Google’s feeds.
• Reconnect with your most valuable customers – For instance, you can drive customer action when they already know your brand and are most likely to engage with it again because they’ve previously visited your site or have bought from you.

Google’s Agenda Behind Discovery Ads

For all these years, Google has heavily relied on paid search text-based ads as its main revenue source. It has always focused on optimizing text ads delivery and placements. Still, the company has realized that it’s no longer possible to grow its text-based ad property without destroying search engine optimization (SEO).

That’s why they decided to launch Discovery ads. These ads are visually appealing, making them ideal for e-commerce product sales as well as several other campaigns. Discovery ads appear more like a reach campaign strategy for many businesses that are striving to expand their funnels over time.

How Can Google Discovery Campaigns Help You?

Google Discovery campaigns provide you with a fantastic opportunity to drive growth at scale for your business quickly. They have undoubtedly surpassed our expectations in driving high-value leads and signups.

So, if you’re looking to stimulate an entirely new audience to action, Google Discovery campaigns are worth trying out.

The following are some key benefits of these campaigns:

• You can reach your ideal customers at scale with just one Discovery campaign.
• You can increase customer engagement with attractive, more relevant ads by leveraging Google’s exceptional understanding of customer intent.
• You can run visually appealing ads natively across Google properties at scale, igniting audience interest, and action with less effort and time.
• You can automate bidding options to fulfill your ad performance objectives.

Tips to Set Up Google Discovery Campaigns

Google Discovery campaigns allow you to share your brand’s unique story with potential customers across feeds on Google whenever they’re open to exploring new products/services.  You can set up this campaign, in Google Ads when you click on campaign and then plus button to add new campaign. Once you select the goal of your campaign you will then see Discovery Campaign option.

Setting up a Discovery campaign is quite similar to the process of display and search network campaigns. You can find here how you can create campaign.  However, you should keep the following points in mind while setting up your discovery ads.

Not All Campaign Settings Are Available for Discovery Ads

Many campaign settings, such as bidding and targeting, are automated for Discovery campaigns so that you can save time and get optimal performance based on your marketing goal, bid, and budget.

However, there are a few features that aren’t supported by Discovery campaigns. For instance, you can’t adjust the following settings:

• Manual bid strategies
• Delivery method
• Device targeting
• Placement targeting (including exclusions)
• Frequency capping
• Ad rotation
• Contextual targeting

Content Exclusion

The safety of your brand is Google’s top priority, which is why it determines the placement of Discovery ads based on the topics that your audience is most interested in.

Google uses cues such as the YouTube videos your customer watches or the content they follow on Discover feed and automatically excludes irrelevant or harmful material to ensure that your ads display next to advertiser-friendly content only.

For instance, Google Discovery campaigns do not display next to content that has strong profanity, sexual content, or graphic violence.

Bidding

At present, Google Discovery campaigns allow only two bidding options: Maximize Conversions and Target CPA. Both of these options make use of Google’s smart bidding and machine learning capabilities.

• Maximize Conversions sets bids automatically to help you drive the most conversions within your budget. It spends the full daily budget that you have specified.
• Target CPA sets bids to yield as many conversions as possible at or below your specified target cost-per-action (CPA).

Assets Needed to Set Up Google Discovery Ads

You can setup a single image and multi-image carousel ad. The following are the assets that you are required to configure:

Headline

Your headline can be as long as 40 characters. It should be aligned with any of your descriptions, images, and landing page. You can include as many as five headlines for one brand creative in case of the single image  In case of a multi-image carousel You can enter a headline to align with each image.

Description

The description makes your headline more appealing, inviting users to take action. It can be as long as 90 characters and can be combined with any of your headlines, images, and landing page. You can have as many as five descriptions for one brand creative.

Images

Want to enjoy the maximum reach? Add several  1.91:1 landscape images. You can add as many as 15 marketing images for one brand creative.

Here are the image recommendations:

• Landscape image (1.91:1) – Minimum size: 600×314. Recommended size: 1200×628. Maximum file size: 5MB
• Square image (1:1) – Minimum size: 300×300. Recommended size: 1200×1200. Maximum file size: 5MB

Always upload images that go well with your logo and can be combined with any of your headlines, descriptions, and landing page.

Also note that the maximum file size can be 1MB, and the supported file types are JPG, PNG, and static GIF. You can also crop the uploaded images to the required aspect ratios after selecting the images. But in case of multi-image carousel only images with an aspect ratio of 1.91:1 and square are allowed

Business Name

Your business name can be as long as 25 characters. And, you can only add a single name for one brand creative.

Logos

You must upload 1:1 square logos only. Keep in mind that your logos will be truncated in ad preview and live rendering on some of the Google properties. So, follow the recommended dimensions of 1200X1200. However, your logo can be as small as 128X128.

Another recommendation is to use a transparent background, provided the logo is centered. You can include logos that work well with any of your headlines, descriptions, and images. Your logo shouldn’t have a size of more than 1MB, and the most common non-gif formats are acceptable.

Final URL

Your final URL is the default landing page that users will reach on when they click on your ad. In case of multi images carousel ad you can associate a specific landing page for each image.

Mobile URL

This is for multi-images carousal and not mandatory. It is for mobile landing page that customers will reach on clicking the ad from a mobile device.

CTA Text

You can also choose a CTA from the drop-down list in the ad creation tool. If you select “Automatic,” Google will automatically select the CTA language to optimize your ad for optimal performance.

The Difference Between Google Discovery Ads and Smart Display Campaigns

The key difference between Google Discovery campaigns and Smart Display Campaigns is that the latter are automated by Google and deliver ads on the Google Display Network. This simplifies the process of creating display ads as all you have to do is submit your creative assets.

On the other hand, Google Discovery campaigns deliver ads across many platforms such as the YouTube home feed, Gmail, and Google Discover. Thus, they allow for more robust ads, enriched with more content.

Google Discovery Campaigns Targeting

As Google Discovery campaigns depend heavily on machine learning for targeting, they determine a potential consumer’s intent by leveraging their activities like past searches, site visits, and video views.

They allow advertisers to make use of numerous familiar audience targets to serve the right users, such as:

Intent & Action

These depend on customers’ recent and relevant acquisition decisions and include:

• Life events (such as Wedding, Buying a House, and Retirement)
• In-market (such as Apparel & Accessories, Home & Gardening, and Business Services)
• Custom intent (based on keywords)
• Remarketing (such as All Visitors and All Converters)

Interest & Habits

These depend on consumers’ interests, frequent behaviors, and habits, including:

• Affinity (such as Shoppers, Travel, and Media & Entertainment)

Demographics

These depend on Google’s demographic information on its users, including:

• Demographics (such as Age, Gender, and Household Income)

Disapproved Discovery Campaign: What Does That Mean?

Your Google Discovery campaigns won’t be approved if you fail to follow the basic Google ads standards. However, make sure that you follow these two main policies to reduce your chances of disapproval:

• Your campaigns should not have any misleading content. All info must be correct and descriptive.
• Your ads should have high-quality images. Avoid using blurry images. Also, make sure that the image layout conforms to Google Ads standards.

Tips to Optimize Your Google Discovery Campaigns

Want to get the most out of your Google Discovery campaigns? Optimize your ads using these tips:

Make your ads immersive and interactive

Using Discovery ads allows you to display a single image of your product or service, as well as several images in a swipeable carousel format. This feature is quite similar to Facebook.

We all know how Facebook allows advertisers to attract passive browsers through interesting image creatives and drive qualified traffic at the top of the funnel.  You can now do the same thing on Google.

Use search intent to target the right audience, increase reach, and narrate your unique brand story via powerful, engaging ad creatives that are perfectly aligned with your marketing goals.

Play with Machine Learning to Make Your Ads More Engaging

When setting up your Discovery ads, you can include your landing page URL, at least one image, a logo, and up to five headlines and five descriptions of your ad.

Google then uses machine learning to serve the best combinations of your headlines, descriptions, and images to your audience across the best-performing placements.

This way, Google attempts to automate the ad optimization process so that you can target more relevant users with more relevant images and messaging while conforming to their strict standards.

So, use this opportunity to make the most of Google’s algorithm and display more click-worthy campaigns.

Get Creative to Reach Beyond Google Discover

Along with a different targeting strategy, Google Discovery campaigns also necessitate you to take a different creative approach. Even though these campaigns should appear in response to the audience’s interests and behavior, there’s still no actual search intent.

So keep in mind where your prospect is in their buyer journey when designing your ad campaign.

Target Audience Carefully

When there’s no search intent involved, it becomes even more crucial to target the audience effectively. Along with being creative with your ad design, leverage your audience targeting while narrating a visual brand story. This will give you the power to attract new prospects on a massive scale. But, it’s only possible if you make your Discovery ads tailor-made for creating brand awareness.

Think Beyond Google Discover

Although Google Discover is relatively new to the market, it has already garnered more than 800 million users. Such remarkable stats indicate both great interest and conviction of advertisers in the effectiveness of this platform.

However, be mindful that Google Discovery campaigns aren’t just limited to these 800 million users. You can run these campaigns on the social and promotions tab in Gmail, as well as YouTube’s Mobile Home Feed. This means you can reach more than a billion potential consumers.

Wrap Up

Google Discovery campaigns offer an exciting platform for brands that enables them to market their products and services more effectively and efficiently. In comparison with standard display campaigns, these ad campaigns drive superior click through rates (CTRs) and conversion rates.

With growing talks of marketers moving away from keywords to concentrate on targeting audiences, Google Discovery Campaigns provide an interesting opportunity to do that, with businesses being able to engage with target audiences through such a fast-expanding platform.

To learn more about that, read our post about audience targeting to show your ads to most relevant users.