How to Run Google Ads: A Beginner’s Guide

If you wish to run Google Ads, having an understanding of how core components work together is essential. Google Ads components include budget and bidding, networks, locations and languages, audience targeting, ad groups, keywords, ad creation, ad extensions, and final campaign launch.

For beginners searching for how to run Google Ads, the process can seem complex, but with a structured approach, you can set up your campaign in a logical and streamlined way.

In this guide, you will learn how to set up your campaign in simple steps, beginning with account creation, adding business information, defining your campaign goals, creating your ads, and setting your audience and budget.

We will clarify how factors like bid type, keyword competitiveness, industry, location, quality score, and campaign budget influence cost and performance. You will also understand how Google’s systems use networks, audience segments, and keyword match types to determine when and where your ads appear.

What are Google Ads?

Google Ads is an online advertising platform by Google that lets advertisers like you promote your business and products/services to encourage potential customers to visit your website, purchase a product, or create awareness.

With Google Ads and its extensive features, advertisers can reach potential customers at the right time. It comes with customizable options to personalize your ads to suit different demographics.

For example, you can create an ad campaign with a goal to install your app or visit your online store. You can target different types of audiences using keywords, locations, and content exclusions. Additionally, you can choose to show your ads at certain times of day and specify a location and language.

On top of this, it’s you who decides how much you want to spend on your Google Ads, and you pay only when someone clicks on your ad.

How Much Does It Cost to Run Google Ads?

There are no fixed costs of running Google Ads. It varies depending on factors like the industry you’re in, competition, targeting, campaign type, etc. As a benchmark, the average cost per click in Google Ads in 2025 is $5.26. And the average starting budget to cover Google Ads costs for SMBs is $1,000-$2,500 per month.

That being said, Google Ads is flexible, and you decide how much you’re willing to pay, your daily/monthly budget, and what keywords, audience, and targeting you choose.

Prerequisites to Run Google Ads

Before you start creating a Google Ads campaign, we advise you to have the following set up to avoid delays in running your ads smoothly.

A Google Ads account: To create ads and reach your audience, you should first have access to a Google Ads account and set it up properly. Don’t worry if you haven’t created one; we will discuss that in our article.
A valid payment method: When setting up your Google Ads account, you need a payment method to provide billing and payment details. Therefore. Ensure you have an active payment method to complete the process.
A website and landing page: Having a website is a must to run Google Ads; without it, you won’t be able to continue with your Google Ads account. You also require a landing page when creating ads, so have that ready before creating an ad campaign.
A product/service to offer: This goes without saying: you need a product or service to promote on Google Ads.
A list of the best keywords to target in your ads: Keywords are more like terms that users search on Google to find your product. You will have to research or use keyword research tools to create a list of best-performing keywords that are relevant to the products/services you offer. When setting up Google Ads campaigns, you will have to provide these keywords in targeting options to display your ads to the right audience at the right time.
Conversion tracking: After running ads, it is crucial to track conversions, and for that, you need to set up conversion tracking. You can implement this after creating your ads, but decide on which method you’re going to use to successfully set up conversion tracking. We will also talk about setting up conversion tracking in our article.

Before setting up your first campaign, having the right foundation ensures that your ads run without any friction. A properly configured Google Ads account, a functional website, reliable tracking, and a clear list of relevant keywords help Google match your ads with high-quality traffic. These basics directly impact your quality score, cost-per-click, and campaign performance. With that, let’s get started!

How to Set Up a Google Ads Account?

Creating a Google Ads account is the first step before you can launch any campaigns. The setup process is straightforward and only requires basic business information, your website, and billing details. It involves three steps:

Step 1: Add business information

In this step, you are required to fill in a few details about your business, such as your company name and website address. Providing them upfront will enable Google to auto-fill important information, boosting the campaign setup process.

You can also link accounts such as YouTube and Google Business Profile. Doing this, Google automatically suggests keywords and headlines for campaigns, saving you time.

Step 2: Select campaign goals and budget (can skip this step)

As mentioned earlier, you can totally skip this step when creating a Google Ads account. We will discuss this step in detail when we cover setting up a Google Ads campaign. To jump directly to that section, click here.

Step 3: Enter your payment details

After filling in your business details, you will be prompted to enter payment details.

Click the “Billing country” drop-down menu. Choose the country or territory where your billing address is located.
- Note: The billing country determines the available payment options, currency, and other billing-related settings.
Select time zone.
- Note: Ensure the correct time zone is selected. If it’s not accurate, choose the proper time zone from the drop-down. Your reports, statistics, and billing are affected by the time zone, so select carefully.
Select or create a payment profile. You can use an existing payment profile or create a new one.
Add your payment method, such as a credit/debit card.
- Note: If you’re using a credit or debit card, a temporary authorization may appear on your card account. This is typically removed within a week. The exact amount will be shown in your Ads account during sign-up.
Click Submit to complete your Google Ads account setup.

After completing your account setup, you may see Google Ads in Smart Mode, which is a simplified version designed for basic, automated campaigns. Smart Mode does not provide access to advanced features such as full bidding strategies, keyword match types, or detailed reporting.

If your account is in Smart Mode, look for the option to “Switch to Expert Mode” at the bottom of the interface or under the Tools & Settings (wrench) menu.

Note: Not all new accounts show Smart Mode, so if you are already in Expert Mode, you can continue with the Google Ads campaign setup.

How to Set Up a Google Ads Campaign?

Before we deep dive, here’s a flowchart that comprises all the steps you must follow in creating Google Ads.

To understand the process of creating a Google Ads campaign, let us consider an example.

Meet Sarah, an e-commerce merchant who is looking to advertise footwear products across Google. As she is new to the market, her goal is to spread awareness about her product or generate website traffic. By selecting website traffic, she is informing Google that her main goal is to get clicks from potential customers who are searching for shoes/sandals/sneakers online.

Let’s start the process.

Step 1: Campaign Objective

The campaign objective you choose determines the bidding strategies, goals, and campaign types Google recommends.

For example, if you select “Sales” as a campaign objective, it gives you conversion-focused goals, while “Awareness and consideration” unlocks Display and Video options optimized for reach.

This is why you should select the objective that matches your business goal.

With this in mind, select a campaign objective. You have the following options:

Sales
Leads
Website Traffic
App promotion
Awareness and consideration
Local store visits and promotions
Create a campaign without guidance

Important:
If you’re new to Google Ads, don’t feel pressured to pick the “perfect” objective right away. Think of the objectives (like Website Traffic or Awareness) as a starting point and not a permanent decision. Google allows you to explore different objectives and switch if you feel the goals or campaign types displayed aren’t right for you.

choose campaign objective as website traffic

Note: When you select ‘Create a campaign without guidance,’ you can choose any campaign type, like Search, Demand Gen, etc.

Step 2: Campaign Goals

Based on Sarah’s example, we are going ahead with ‘website traffic.’ Upon selecting website traffic, you will see the following screen, where you can select goals.

Note: As mentioned earlier, goals change depending on your campaign objective. If you see that the goals are not aligning with your business goals, change the campaign objective.

For instance, we went ahead with ‘website traffic.’ Based on this, Google generates the following goals: add to carts, begin checkout, purchase, and more.

Note: If you select Website Traffic, Google may suggest goals such as page views or engaged sessions. Purchase-related goals, like add to cart, begin checkout, or purchases, will only appear if you already have those conversion actions set up in your account. For the Google Ads account that we’re using, the conversion actions are already set up; that is why you are seeing these conversion actions.

But, our business goal is to encourage visits to the website and goals like add to cart, purchases don’t fulfil our goal. Therefore, we will change the campaign objective to ‘Awareness and consideration.’

Step 3: Campaign Type

Based on the goals, Google populates campaign types. For example, let’s say we go ahead with reach or video views (you can select only one), we can either choose a video or a display campaign.

But before going further, let’s quickly understand the campaign types Google offers for advertisers to promote products/services across Google.

Note: Your campaign type determines where your ads will show and what they’ll look like. For example, if you select video ads, they will be displayed as videos on YouTube.

Performance Max: PMax is an AI-driven campaign that runs ads across all Google channels. They are displayed on search results, YouTube, feeds on the YouTube homepage, “What to watch next” on YouTube, the Shopping tab on search results, Gmail inboxes, and Discover.
- PMax ad types include text, image, video, multi-image carousel, and product listing ads (for example, PMax feed-only campaigns). PMax campaigns are best for e-commerce and lead-gen advertisers with proper conversion tracking. Choose it for wide reach and automated optimization.
Shopping: Shows product images, titles, and prices directly in Google Search and Shopping. Shopping ad campaigns (product listing ads) are displayed on search results, the Shopping tab, websites, and Gmail. Ideal for e-commerce stores selling physical products. Select it to capture high-intent shoppers who are ready to buy.
Demand Gen: Demand Gen campaigns are displayed on the YouTube homepage, on ‘what to watch next,’ and on Gmail inboxes. They appear in multi-image carousel ad formats. Visual ads across YouTube, Discover, and Gmail to create demand and retarget users. These campaigns are ideal for mid-funnel engagement. Choose it when visuals and brand influence matter.
Search: Search ad campaigns are displayed in Google search results in the form of text ads. They are ideal for capturing high-intent traffic. Choose it when you want targeted, intent-driven clicks or leads.
Video: Video ads are displayed on YouTube in the form of videos. Runs video ads on YouTube for awareness, consideration, or action. Ideal for brands with strong video creatives. Choose it to influence decisions through storytelling.
Display: Display ad campaigns are displayed on websites and Gmail inboxes in the form of images across websites and apps. Good for brand awareness and remarketing at a low cost. Choose it to stay top-of-mind or re-engage past visitors.
App: App campaigns are displayed in search results on mobile devices, Google Play, YouTube, AdMob, Discover, and more than 3 million sites and apps. These campaigns have the following ad types: a mix of text, image, video, or HTML5 assets you upload, or assets from your app’s listing in the relevant application store.

For Sarah’s example, we want to generate clicks, so we go with the ‘Reach,’ and based on this goal, we will have to choose from a ‘Video’ or ‘Display’ campaign.

Back to our campaign type: Video and Display.

Remember: If you choose video views as a goal, you should have a high-quality video that showcases your products. You will use this video when we come to creating the ad part. If you do not have one, you can leave out the video views option. On the other hand, if you choose it, you will have one campaign type: Video.

When you choose Reach, you will have two campaign types to run your ads, and Google optimizes your campaigns for unique visitors and impressions. When you choose Video views, your campaign will be optimized for views. Based on this information, it is a wise choice to go with Reach, as we want visitors to the store.

After selecting the appropriate goal and campaign type, click ‘Continue.’

For demonstration purposes, we are going with the goal, ‘Reach’ and the campaign type ‘Display.’

Important: Know that selecting this particular objective or goal, or campaign type, is not the only way to encourage store visits or clicks. You can go with the ‘Create a campaign without guidance’ objective and select the Search/Demand Gen/PMax ads campaign to run ads. Remember that whatever objective or campaign type you choose, the campaign setup process is similar.

As you see in the image shared above, you can select website visits, phone calls or both as the results you want to get from this campaign.

How Do Ad Groups Work in Search Campaigns?

In Google Ads, ad groups are used mainly in Search campaigns, where you organize your keywords and ads around a central theme. Each ad group contains a set of keywords and the ads that should show when someone searches for those keywords. This structure helps Google match the right ad to the right search term and improves your overall relevance and Quality Score.

In Search campaigns, ad groups act like containers that organize your keywords and ads by theme.

For example, if you’re selling footwear, you might have separate ad groups for “running shoes,” “sandals,” and “formal shoes”—each with its own set of keywords and related ad copy.

Keyword match types also play a role here. You can use:

Broad match (reaches a wide audience)
Phrase match (shows ads for searches that include your keyword phrase)
Exact match (targets only exact keyword searches)

Note: Display campaigns, like the one Sarah is using, don’t follow the same ad-group-based keyword structure. Instead, Display relies on audiences, placements, keywords, topics, and other signals to decide where ads appear. However, understanding ad groups is still essential because they are the foundation of Search ad campaigns, which most beginners eventually use to capture high-intent traffic.

Step 4: Campaign Settings

The next step is campaign settings, which includes the following options:

Locations & Languages: Select countries and languages you wish to display your ads in.
EU political ads: Select the right option based on your ads, and for more information on this, refer to Google’s official document on EU political ads.

Ad Schedule: The Ad Schedule lets you select a time period to display your ads. You can choose all days and all the time without any limitations. Or you can choose specific days along with certain time intervals to display your ads.

Ad rotation: When you select ‘prefer best performing ads,’ Google will display certain best-performing ads that are more likely to generate clicks and conversions. When you select the latter option, ‘Do not optimize: Rotate ads indefinitely,’ high-performing and low-performing ads are both displayed to your users for an indefinite period of time.

Thus, Google recommends using ‘prefer best performing ads.’

Devices: You can also choose to target audiences based on their type of devices, operating systems, and network.

Why should you focus on device targeting?

Device targeting in Google Ads allows you to show your ads to people based on the specific devices they are using. This can help you reach your ideal audience more effectively and tailor your ad messages for different device experiences.

Campaign URL options: With this option, you can add your landing page URL and required parameters to track user actions. This option has two fields: tracking template and final URL suffix.

A tracking template is a special URL that adds tracking parameters to your landing page so you can see where each click came from, which keyword triggered it, and how the user interacted with your ad.

In the Tracking Template box, you enter a URL with tracking parameters that tells Google where to send click data.

Example of how your tracking template looks: {lpurl}?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign={campaignid}&utm_term={keyword}&utm_content={adgroupid}

The Final URL suffix appends your UTM parameters at the end of your landing page URL.

This field only requires you to enter UTM parameters, for example, utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign={campaignid}.

Both these fields are for tracking purposes, but here’s how they differ:

The Final URL Suffix is mainly used for basic tracking, such as adding UTM parameters that help advertisers understand where a click came from (campaign, keyword, ad, etc.). It simply appends tracking data to the end of your landing page URL without changing the user’s experience.
On the other hand, the tracking template is used for advanced tracking setups, and the structure varies depending on the third-party tracking tool you use. It often includes redirects, dynamic parameters, and {lpurl}, making it suitable for platforms like Hyros, RedTrack, Voluum, and other advanced analytics systems.

Dynamic ads: Dynamic ads use a data feed to create personalized ads to users based on their interaction on your website or app. To understand more about how these ads work, go through Google’s article on Dynamic Ads.

Start and end dates: Set start and end dates for your campaigns. If you do not specify one, your ads keep running endlessly.

Content exclusions: This option allows you to choose certain types of content where you do not wish to show your ads. For example, if you’re selling products that are for adults, you might want to exclude your ads from showing on websites or other sites that are primarily for kids.

Step 5: Budget and Bid Strategy

Budget

In the budget field, you manually enter the amount you’re willing to spend on your Google ads per day. If you’ve figured out your monthly budget for a campaign, deciding on your average daily budget is simple.

For example, if you’re willing to spend $600 for a campaign per month, you divide this amount by 30.4 (the average number of days in a month). Therefore, your average daily budget would be $19.73.

Depending on search traffic and other factors like the ROI of your ads, Google optimizes your campaign spend. Which means, you might notice that Google spends more than your average daily budget, which is more than $19.7 on a few days, and less than $19 on some other days. That being said, Google will never exceed your daily budget.

To know more about how Google is spending your budget, you can access the budget report in your Google Ads account. This report helps you understand how much you are projected to pay at the end of the month, as well as how past changes to your average daily budget impacted your performance and spend limit. To access the budget report, go to campaigns >> select ad group >> and select ‘view budget report’ next to an ad group.

How do you set an average daily budget?

You can use tools like Google’s performance planner to plan your budgets across accounts and campaigns. Here’s an official Google document to help you explore more about how the performance planner works. Do give it a read to plan your budgets for Google Ads. Apart from this tool, you can also depend on the cost-per-click metric to decide your daily budget. You will find this in keyword research tools like Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, and more.

Bidding Strategy

The next section is setting up a bid strategy. Google Ads bidding strategies include manual and automatic methods.

While manual bidding strategies give full control to advertisers, one must have experience in handling them. On the other hand, there’s Google AI, which automatically sets bids in real-time based on factors such as location, device, time of the day, etc.

When setting the bidding strategies to optimize for clicks, follow these options:

In the field, ‘what do you want to focus on,’ choose ‘clicks.’ In the next field, ‘how do you want to get clicks.’ There are two options: automatically maximize clicks and manually set bids.

What do you choose?

When you select ‘Automatically maximize’ clicks, Google Ads assigns bids automatically to each click to generate maximum clicks.

With the ‘Manually set bids’ option, Google will use a manual CPC bid strategy. As mentioned earlier, Manual CPC gives you full control over your max cost per click, but you must adjust bids manually to improve performance.

For example, if Sarah sets a Manual CPC bid of $0.12 on “women’s sandals,” Google will never charge her more than $0.12 for a click, even if competitors are bidding higher. If she wants more impressions, she can manually increase the bid.

It’s decision time!

So far, we are clear on the following: Sarah is a beginner who wants to encourage visits to her store using a Display campaign. So, which bidding strategy is better?

For Sarah’s Display campaign with an Awareness & Consideration objective, “Maximize Clicks” is the better bidding strategy. It lets Google automatically find the most cost-effective and best placements to generate clicks and visibility.

Manual CPC requires experience and constant adjustments and can heavily limit reach, making it unsuitable for beginners running awareness-driven Display ads.

With that decision, let’s move on.

You can also opt to check the box next to ‘Set a maximum cost per click bid limit.’ This option lets you put a strict ceiling on the highest amount Google can pay for a single click while using automated bidding like Maximize Clicks. Google will still optimize bids automatically, but it will never bid above the limit you set.

For example, if your max CPC is $4, Google may bid $1 or $2, depending on the placement, but never exceed $4.

There’s another option, ‘Or, select a bid strategy (not recommended),’ which allows you to select from the following bid strategies:

Automated bid strategies:

Target CPA: Google automatically sets bids to help you get as many conversions as possible at your target cost per acquisition. Ideal for lead generation and sales-focused campaigns. Works best when you already have enough conversion data.
Target ROAS: Google bids to achieve your desired return on ad spend by focusing on high-value conversions. Best for e-commerce businesses that track revenue. Requires strong historical conversion value data.
Maximize Clicks: Automatically sets bids to get the most clicks (more on Maximize clicks bidding strategy) within your budget. Best for traffic-focused or awareness campaigns. Great for beginners who want simple, hands-off bidding.
Maximize Conversions: Google uses automation to get as many conversions as possible for your budget. Ideal for advertisers with clear conversion tracking in place. Works well when you want volume without a strict CPA target.
Maximize Conversion Value: Optimizes bidding to drive the highest total conversion value (revenue). Perfect for e-commerce businesses focused on revenue, not just conversions. Requires accurate conversion value tracking (e.g., purchase value).
Viewable CPM (vCPM): You pay only when your ad is actually viewable—not just shown. Best for awareness campaigns where visibility matters. Ideal for Display and YouTube placements focused on impressions.

Note: Google increasingly promotes target CPM (tCPM) for reach-based campaigns, so vCPM may not appear in all accounts. If you don’t see vCPM, use tCPM for impression-focused campaigns.

Manual bid strategies:

Manual CPC: You set your own max cost-per-click bids for each keyword or ad group. Gives full control but requires constant monitoring and optimization. Best for experienced advertisers—not recommended for beginners.

Important: Given the scenario, going with the automatically maximize clicks bid strategy will be the best option, considering the campaign objective and goals.

Note: Google also offers a portfolio strategy, where advertisers can combine a group of campaigns under one bid strategy.

Step 6: Targeting

Audience Segments:

Before you go ahead in choosing the audience segment, let’s learn a bit about it:

There are a few types of audience segments: Affinity, In-Market, Custom Segments, and Demographics. These fall under Google Ads audience targeting options, which help advertisers reach the right users based on interests, intent, behavior, and personal attributes.

Read more: Google Ads audience targeting

What are they?

Affinity audiences are broad groups of people with long-term interests or lifestyles, helping you reach users who consistently engage with topics like fashion or shopping (considering Sarah’s footwear brand).
In-market audiences consist of users actively researching or comparing products and are close to making a purchase decision.
Custom segments let you target people based on specific keywords they’ve searched, websites they’ve visited, or apps they use, giving you more tailored intent-based reach.
Demographic targeting allows you to reach users based on age, gender, parental status, or household income to ensure your ads reach the most relevant audience.

For Sarah’s Display campaign, she should target a mix of Affinity, In-Market, and Custom keyword-based segments to reach shoppers interested in fashion and footwear. Affinity audiences help her build broad awareness, In-Market audiences reach people actively looking for shoes, and Custom Segments target users who have recently searched for relevant terms like “women’s sandals” or “comfortable footwear.”

When adding the targeting options, select from the already existing segments; refer to the image shared below.

If you wish to add more such information about your audiences, select the ‘Browse’ tab. This option lets you provide additional details to improve audience targeting and reach the right audience.

Moving on, you can add Demographics, which includes adding details such as gender, age, parental status, etc.

Adding keywords is the next step in targeting options. To pick the best keywords for your Google Ads, you need to research high-performing keywords with high search volume and low competition. You can use tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, or SEMRush or talk to your SEO experts. After gathering the keywords, add them here.

Or, you can use the ‘Get keyword ideas’ option to generate keywords based on your product and website.

For example, we tried to generate keyword ideas for adidas.com, and the following are the results. Similarly, you can add your website and products here to generate a keyword ideas list that works for your store. Google Ads sources these keywords from Google Keyword Planner, so you can ensure the quality of your keywords.

You can select a few highly relevant keywords from these ideas or select all by clicking on ‘Add all ideas.’ And you will see the keywords are added to the left-hand side box.

At the end, you will find a keyword setting option. If you select this box, it means your ads will be displayed on websites/apps/videos where the content matches that of your keywords. Meaning, as the keywords are related to shoes/footwear, your ads will be displayed on websites or apps that are in a similar industry.

In the following targeting options, you have topic targeting, where you select certain industries such as automotive, books, business, computers, etc. When you select these industries, you’re suggesting that Google display your ads on webpages/apps that have content about cars, computers, or business.

The final targeting option is placement targeting:

This option lets you add placements across the Google Display Network, which includes YouTube, websites, and mobile apps. With this option, you can add specific placements to narrow your targeting.

For example,

When I select websites and enter ‘footwear’ in the search bar, it gives me a list of websites that are associated with the keyword ‘footwear.’ You can select a few websites of your choice.
Similarly, you can select YouTube and enter a keyword, and you will see a list of YouTube channels that are associated with the keyword you provide, and select the appropriate ones.
If you have a particular website/YouTube channel you wish to show your ads on, click on the ‘Enter’ tab and paste a list of placement URLs (website URLs, YouTube URLs) where you wish to place your ads.

With this, we have come to the end of Google Ads targeting options. Before you proceed with the next section, make sure you review the targeting options. After reviewing and making necessary adjustments, click on ‘Next.’

Step 7: Ads

This is the final step in launching your Google Ads. In this step, you will create ad components like headline, description, images, etc.

Important: Your images, headlines, long headlines, and descriptions directly affect your ad strength and overall performance. High-quality visuals, clear messaging, and strong calls-to-action improve click-through rates and Quality Score.

In this section, you will have to provide the following details:

Final URL: This is the URL a visitor reaches after clicking your ad. It can be your homepage or product page. But ensure the content/offer on the page matches what you promote in your ad.
Business name: Enter your brand name.
Images: You can add up to 15 images; ensure they are of high quality. We shall discuss more on this in the ‘Tips’ section. To use images for your ads, you can either create them on your own or use Google AI.

Take a look at the images below; all these are Google AI-generated images, and we’ve handpicked and added a few of them. If you wish to create images for your ads, ensure you go through Google’s image quality guidelines to avoid disapproval. These guidelines apply to AI-generated images as well; ensure you abide by them. For example, as you can see in the image below, Google requires you to add at least 1 landscape and 1 square image, so this is a must when adding images.

Logos: You can add up to 5 logos of your brand.
Headlines: Google Ads allows you to add up to 5 headlines. Struggling to create engaging ad copies? We have got you covered. Here’s an article on how to create Google Ads copies along with free templates.

Long Headline: You must add one long headline.
Descriptions: Add up to 5 descriptions. You can use AI tools like ChatGPT to come up with descriptions of your products/services. But before you upload them to Google Ads, ensure you review them thoroughly.

Video: Adding a video is optional, as we’ve selected Display campaign. But if you’re running video ads, you should upload them. Google AI can also generate a video for you based on your logos, headlines, and images.
Additional format options: Google Ads offers a few more options to optimize your ads for better reach and performance. These include image/video/native format enhancements. By selecting these options, you give permission to Google to enhance your ad assets like images (for example, smart cropping, resolution improvement, and animated images), auto-generated videos (using headlines and descriptions you provide), and native formats.

What are native formats?Native ads adopt the format suitable for the website they are shown on to provide a seamless experience.

As you continue to add ad assets, your ad strength increases. You can find the ad strength banner at the top of the page.

After adding all the required assets, click on ‘Apply changes’ to save them. Before you move ahead, ensure you preview ads on mobile and desktop. The preview gives you a sneak peek into how your ad appears across Gmail, YouTube, and other networks.

Google Ads Ad Extensions (Assets)

In addition to your ad copy and creatives, Google Ads allows you to add ad extensions (now called “assets”) to make your ads more informative and clickable. These assets appear alongside your main ad and can include extra links, text, or contact options that encourage users to engage.

A few common examples include:

Sitelink assets (additional links to key pages like categories or offers),
Callout assets (short benefit snippets such as “Free Shipping” or “24/7 Support”)
Structured snippet assets (lists like “Brands: Nike, Adidas, Puma”),
Call assets (phone numbers), and
Location assets (your business address from Google Business Profile)

Tips to Create Engaging Google Ads

Implement at least one responsive search ad with ‘Good’ or ‘Excellent’ Ad Strength per ad group. Responsive search ads use Google AI to identify the best combination of assets, helping you deliver relevant ads that adapt to changing consumer behaviors.
Add at least 4 unique image assets. Include your business logo and business name.
Craft messaging that focuses on user benefits. Tie your headline and description line’s messaging to your keywords. This shows your ad’s relevance to what users are searching for. For example, if “digital cameras” is a keyword, your headline could be “Buy Digital Cameras.”
Avoid generic language and use specific calls to action.
Include prices, promotions, or exclusives in your headlines or descriptions to help users make decisions.
Match your ad to your landing page. Ensure that the promotions or products mentioned in your ad are easily found on your website.
Give a read to this article on Google Ads examples to craft highly relevant and captivating Google Ads copies.

Step 8: Review

We have successfully created a Google Ad campaign. Before you launch, a final review helps ensure your objective, targeting, keywords, and bidding strategy all align with your campaign goal. This step helps catch errors like incorrect locations, mismatched landing pages, forgotten exclusions, or irrelevant keywords—all of which can lead to wasted budget once your ads go live.

Carefully analyze each component and adjust it. Once done, launch your campaign. Although we’ve reached the final stage in running Google Ads, we have more key elements to cover to improve your ad performance.

How to Set Up Google Ads Conversion Tracking?

To accurately measure the actions users take after clicking your ads, you need to set up conversion tracking in Google Ads.

Advertisers can choose from several methods depending on their website setup:

Google Tag: The most common approach is using the Google Tag, where you place the conversion code directly on your website to track purchases, sign-ups, form submissions, or other key actions.
Google Tag Manager: You can also set up tracking using Google Tag Manager (GTM), which allows you to manage all tracking tags in one place without editing website code.
Google Analytics 4: If your site uses Google Analytics 4 (GA4), you can import GA4 events into Google Ads as conversions, ensuring a clean, streamlined setup that keeps both platforms aligned.
Google Ads API: Another option is using the Google Ads API, typically for advanced or server-side implementations. Server-side tracking is useful when you want more accurate event collection or when browser limitations prevent certain events from firing reliably.
Nabu for Google Ads Pixel: If you prefer a beginner-friendly approach, you can use AdNabu’s Google Ads Pixel, which helps e-commerce merchants automatically track conversions without needing complex manual setup.

Once you have set up conversion tracking, you can verify that events are firing correctly using Google Ads’ built-in Tag Diagnostics tool, Google Tag Assistant, or Nabu’s Google Ads pixel validation panel.

Tools to Successfully Launch Google Ads

To streamline the process of launching your Google Ads campaigns, we have curated a list of tools:

Google Analytics (GA4): GA4 helps you track user behavior, conversions, and traffic sources and measure what happens after users click your ads.
Keyword Research Tools: You should have keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, SEMrush, etc., to create a list of high-performing keywords that are relevant to the products/services you’re selling.
Landing Page Builder Tools: Tools like Shopify, WordPress, Webflow, or Unbounce help build high-converting landing pages for your ads.
Image Editing Tools: To edit/design your images, you can make use of tools like Canva, CapCut, Figma, and Adobe Express. These tools also help you create videos for Video/Display ads.
Conversion Tracking Tools: To set up conversion tracking, you can use tools like Google Tag Manager or Nabu for Google Ads Pixel.

Common Mistakes to Avoid in Google Ads

Before we get into details, let’s quickly talk about some of the basic and most common mistakes advertisers make:

1. Not defining clear objectives.

2. Creating weak ad copies and creatives.

3. Not setting up conversion tracking.

4. Failing to test and optimize campaigns.

Now, let’s get into some details of mistakes beginners make:

Common Mistake 1: Ignoring mobile users

Not optimizing for mobile users simply means missed opportunities.

Solution:

Users searching for a specific service/product on the phone are more likely to want to know your location or call you; therefore, ensure you provide location and call assets.
Create ads specifically for mobile devices along with a mobile-friendly landing page.
Test your website to know its speed on mobile using tools like Google PageSpeed Insights and promptly fix it.

Common Mistake 2: Inefficient budget allocation and bidding strategies

In most cases, beginners struggle with how to spend their budget and choose the right bidding strategy, leading to overspending or underperforming.

Solution:

Go for smart bidding strategies, wherever applicable.
Assign a higher budget to high-performing campaigns and less to experimental or lower ROI campaigns.

Note: When using smart bidding, avoid changing budgets too frequently or too drastically, as it can reset or extend the learning period.

Common Mistake 3: Targeting the wrong audience

Use keyword, placement, and/or topic targeting to show ads alongside relevant content. Consider audience targeting, such as demographic targeting, remarketing, custom audiences, and affinity audiences, which target the customer directly.
Use frequency capping (for Display and Video campaigns) to limit how often your ads appear to the same users.
Utilize the advanced location options in your Google Ads account for optimal targeting and improved campaign performance.

Common Mistake 4: Not matching ads to landing pages

Your landing page must align with your ad promise.

To achieve this, take a look at your landing page and ensure that the promotions/products displayed in your ad are included in your landing page too.

Common Mistake 5: Not leveraging Google AI and automation

Google AI lets you optimize campaigns to improve campaign performance and yield better results, making it a mandatory option for advertisers, whether beginners or experts. Here’s how you can leverage AI in the campaign creation and optimization process:

Make use of the PMax campaign to display ads across Google channels using a single campaign. When running PMax campaigns, you can also combine a keyword-based search campaign.
Use AI-powered tools like image/video enhancements to launch your ads faster.
Use Google’s AI features in Search campaigns, such as automatically created assets, conversational experience for Search, and smart bidding strategies.

Common Mistake 7: Ignoring quality score

Poor quality scores lead to higher CPCs and lower ad ranks.

To improve quality score, improve ad relevance, landing page experience, and expected CTR. Ensure your keywords match your ad copy and landing page content.

Best Practices & Tips to Run Google Ads

Let’s quickly touch up on all the important aspects of launching your Google Ads campaign.

Before you start creating a Google Ads campaign, it is critical to establish your objectives. You should have a complete understanding of your business goals, be it creating awareness, generating leads, or driving online sales. Having a clear objective in mind will help you in setting up the right targeting options, budget, and ad formats.
For the sake of this article, we went ahead with a display campaign, but you can use Google’s AI-powered ads like PMax and Demand Gen to find converting customers and to create demand on YouTube, Gmail, and Discover, respectively.
Have an in-depth understanding of your audience. Deep dive into the specific needs and questions your potential customers might have. Use this information in your product descriptions, ad copies, and other assets like images/videos. To improve audience targeting, consider using demographic targeting and creating custom audiences and affinity audiences.
If you go with a Demand Gen campaign, use lookalike segments where you can reach new audiences that have similar characteristics to your existing customers.
Always provide a maximum number of ad assets, like 5 headlines, 5 descriptions, and 15 images, to help Google AI create multiple combinations to enhance quality.
Ensure you make use of the generative AI capabilities of Google Ads to create high-quality assets like images/videos. You can also upload a reference image to guide the Google AI to generate similar images.
Set up conversion tracking in Google Ads and integrate GA4 for more advanced tracking.
After launching your ads, test different headlines, descriptions, and targeting methods to understand what’s driving results and optimize your campaigns to include high-performing assets. To test, you can use the Google Ads experiments tool.
When you have multiple campaigns to work with, use ‘portfolio bid strategies.’ These strategies are AI-powered and goal-driven, and group together multiple campaigns, ad groups, and keywords to optimize bids.
Make use of Google Ads Data Manager to centralize all your customer data (first-party data). With this tool, you can import and manage your first-party data and share it securely with Google.
Make use of the Tag Diagnostics tool to troubleshoot potential issues with your Google tags and gain insights into the health of your Google tags within Google Ads and Google Analytics (GA4).
If you have set up enhanced conversion tracking, you can use Tas Diagnostics to validate if the setup is working properly. You can set up enhanced conversions using the Google Tag, Google Tag Manager, or the Google Ads API.
Go through this in-depth article on Google Ads optimization tips to optimize your campaigns based on their performance.
Perform a Google Ads audit annually/biannually to confirm you are using the right objectives, campaign types, keywords, targeting options, and more.

Conclusion

Once your account is set up, your business information is added, and your campaign goals are defined, the rest of the process follows a predictable flow: configure your settings, build your ad groups, create strong ad assets, review everything carefully, and launch with confidence.

Key Takeaways & Actionable Tips

Match your campaign objective to your business goal to ensure Google optimizes your ads correctly.
Beginners should stick to simple, goal-aligned bidding, such as Maximize Clicks or Maximize Conversions, once tracking is in place.
Begin with high-intent, well-researched keywords. Avoid broad match until you have enough data.
Use Google Tag, GTM, GA4, Google Ads API, or AdNabu’s Google Ads Pixel to ensure accurate measurement.
Combine Affinity, In-Market, and Custom Segments, demographics, and placements to reach the most relevant users.
Add multiple headlines, descriptions, and images; improve ad strength; and align your ads with your landing pages.
Verify locations, exclusions, budget, settings, and keywords to prevent wasted ad spend.
Review search terms, add negative keywords, update bids, and test different assets using Google’s Experiments tool.
Use PMax, Demand Gen, and AI-powered asset enhancements where applicable, but maintain strategic oversight.
Reassess campaign structure, bidding, targeting, and performance every 6–12 months.

FAQs

How to run Google Ads step by step?

Create a Google Ads account, provide basic details related to your business, add payment methods, and start creating your Google Ads campaign. Select a campaign objective, goals, campaign type, campaign settings, budget, bidding strategy, and targeting options, then create ads, review, and launch them.

Can I run Google Ads on my own?

Yes, you can run Google Ads on your own. But you must have knowledge of Google Ads components like campaign types, bidding strategies, and so on. You can also refer to the blog above as a starting point in creating Google Ads campaigns.

Is running Google Ads free?

No, it is not free, and you must pay per click on your ads. However, creating an account on Google Ads is completely free.

Is $10 a day enough for Google Ads?

As discussed in the blog, budgets vary from industry to industry, and Google will only spend based on the average daily budget that you set up in Google Ads. To understand how to set up a budget for your campaign, look out for CPC or use a performance planner to plan a budget effectively.

How to run Google Search Ads?

To run a Search ad campaign, select the objective as sales or leads. In the campaign types section, select Search ads and navigate through the campaign creation process by selecting budget, bidding strategy, targeting options, and so on. After creating ads, review and launch them.