How Dynamic Search Ads Work

Over the past several months we have been giving Dynamic Search Ads in AdWords a try with a few of our client accounts. At this point we can safely say that 80% of the time they are helping us improve our average position, lower our cost-per-click and improve our click-through-rate. What this means is that Dynamic Search Ads aren’t a silver bullet – but if you are running an Adwords campaign they are definitely something you want to try.

So, you are probably wondering How Dynamic Search Ads Work? Well, here is a quick primer on DSAs:

Basically you create an Adgroup in AdWords that targets a specific page on your site. You tell Adwords what the page URL is and Google grabs the information it needs from the page and begins entering your ads into auctions for search queries that match the details they grabbed from your page. When your ad is triggered Adwords dynamically generates an appropriate headline.

Here is what the basic set-up looks like:

Now, there are a couple of things that you want to be sure to be paying attention to after starting a Dynamic Search Ad campaign. First, you are giving up a lot of control over what your ads say. Second, You will want to monitor the search query reports and be sure that the traffic your DSA campaign is driving to your page is relevant. Lastly, you will want to make sure you are adding negative keywords to improve relevance.

Want to learn more about how dynamic search ads work? Here are some additional resources:

Using Dynamic Search Ads

How to create Dynamic Search Ads

Optimizing your Dynamic Search Ads

by Josh Becerra