Search engine avdertising (SEA)

Search engine advertising is present to almost everyone who spends time online. Search engine advertising, or SEA for short, means placing paid advertisements in search engines. Questions such as which are the largest providers of search engine advertising, what are the opportunities and risks of advertising within a search engine and what are the central components of search engine advertising are answered below.

The largest providers of search engine advertising

On the search engine market there are a lot of different search engines in which advertising can be placed. According to statistics, the global market share of the Google search engine in April 2022 was 85.21%. This is followed by Bing with a global market share of 8.5%. It can be concluded that the highest reach can be achieved with these search engines, which makes advertising in these search engines the most attractive for companies.

Google Ads

To run search engine advertising, one must first register on a corresponding advertising platform, such as Google Ads. In German-speaking countries, Google Ads has a market share of over 90%, which makes this provider a mandatory solution. Google Ads is an advertising system that allows advertisers to place ads that are primarily based on Google search results and the Google display network. Through Google Ads, it is easy to deliver relevant and trustworthy ads as well as present appropriate advertising messages to existing and potential customers. It offers profitable opportunities to businesses of all sizes as well as advertisers with and without experience in online advertising. Classically, Google Ads campaigns are paid per click cost-per-click. However, there are also other ways of billing.

With Google Ads you can place different types of advertisements. In addition to the classic search ad, shopping ads, ads in the Google display network, YouTube ads and app ads can also be created. The booked ads are always marked as advertising.

Microsoft Advertising

The second-largest provider of search engine advertising is Microsoft Advertising, formerly Bing Ads. It has a market share of around 5% in German-speaking countries. Microsoft Advertising stands for paid advertisements in the Microsoft Search Network. Ads can be placed in the Bing search engine or partner websites. In Microsoft Advertising there is the possibility to place two different types of ads: Search Ads and Content Ads. Search ads are focused on the user’s search query, which is displayed on the search results page of Bing and Yahoo. Content ads are targeted to the content that the user opens. These content ads are placed on Bing’s partner websites. The cost is only cost-per-click with this provider as well.

The Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising accounts are quite similar in structure. The account consists of campaigns, which are divided into several ad groups. You can place different ads in these ad groups.

Comparison of Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising

The biggest differences that Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising point out are:

In terms of reach, there is a big difference between the two providers. Google dominates the SEA market with a market share of over 90%. Microsoft Advertising, on the other hand, has to settle for a share of around 5%.

The two providers do not only operate on their own platforms. The Google portfolio includes other products such as the display network, Google Play, Google Shopping and YouTube. Microsoft Advertising advertises not only on its own search engine Bing, but also on Yahoo, AOL, MNS, Ecosia and X-Box Live.

Designations can sound the same on Microsoft Advertising and Google Ads, but also quite different. The main differences in the designation are listed here:

Google Ads Microsoft Advertising
Labels
Naming
Advertising chances
Options
Costs
Expenditures
Extension with additional information
Legend extension
Conversion tag
UET Tag (Universal Event Tracking)
Conversion action
Goals
Bulk tasks
Quantity processing
Keyword options: Largely Matching, Matching Group of Words, Exactly Matching
Keyword options: Wide, Expression, Accurate
Shopping Feed
Catalogue

The two platforms differ significantly in terms of availability. Google offers almost complete coverage, with only a few exceptions due to political restrictions. Microsoft Advertising, on the other hand, currently covers only 35 states with its services. However, a more global focus is planned.

The costs incurred when using Microsoft Advertising are a lot lower than those incurred with Google Ads. This is due to the lower competition for bids at Microsoft. The average cost-per-click can be as much as 70% lower with Microsoft Ads than Google Ads.
However, when comparing the costs of the two platforms, it is important to remember that the two platforms do not receive the same traffic. In some cases, while the cost-per-click is lower with Microsoft Advertising, so is the quality of access, so advertisers can end up paying more for a conversion than with Google Ads. However, the opposite can also be true. With the right traffic, Microsoft Advertising can generate more revenue at a low cost-per-click.

Setting up an SEA account

In principle, an SEA account consists of different campaign types. These campaign types include at least one campaign, which in turn are subdivided into ad groups. These ad groups have different ads. At all levels, keywords are important. What needs to be considered with these different components of SEA is explained below.

Struktur eines Google Ads-Kontos

Setting up an SEA account

Campaigns

In search engine advertising, campaigns are suitable for organising products or services by category. Campaigns can be subdivided into different campaign types, such as search campaigns or display campaigns, each with different goals.

A campaign includes several ad groups, but at least one ad group. Some settings are only available at campaign level, such as budget, language, location, and ad network targeting, which apply to all ad groups within the campaign. Accordingly, multiple campaigns can be created independently of each other, containing the same ad groups but with different geographic targeting.

Google Ads allows a maximum of 10,000 campaigns within an account, which includes all active and paused campaigns.

 

Ad groups

Ad groups are the subdivisions of a campaign and help to sort ads thematically. An ad group contains one or more ads with similar goals. Ad groups thus provide the structure within a campaign, separate and organize topics or products and control the keyword & ad order. For many advertisers, it can be helpful if the ad groups are based on the sections or categories of the website.

With Google Ads, a maximum of 20,000 ad groups can be implemented per campaign.

Ads and ad extensions

Ads are what the user will see when searching for a specific keyword. Different ad types can be created in Google Ads depending on the campaign type. The responsive search ad replaces the classic search ad as the standard for search network campaigns since July 2022. This includes a maximum of 15 ad titles, 4 descriptions and the optional path fields. Google combines the ad assets depending on the search query and searchers to achieve the best possible result.

Since the ad title is most prominently visible, words that are frequently entered as search terms should be used here. A call-to-action should also be included, as well as highlighting the company’s unique selling point(s). A call-to-action refers to any means designed to elicit an immediate response or promote an immediate sale such as “order online now.” Google Ads limits the ad title to a maximum of 30 characters.

The description is intended to highlight specific information about the company’s products or services. A maximum of four descriptions can be added with a limit of 90 characters per description. Which will then be played out selected by Google.

The optional path fields should give the user a clear idea of which website they are visiting. Two paths can be created with a maximum of 15 letters per path.

Beispiel einer Google Ads-Anzeige

Example Google Ads ad

To supplement the information of ads, there are ad extensions. These can significantly increase the performance of ads, as they contain more information than a classic ad and are visually more eye-catching to the user. Google Ads offers a variety of extensions, such as page link extensions, extensions with additional information, snippet extensions, image extensions and many more.

Most of the extensions are only visible on the first placement on the search results page.

Keywords

Search terms are words or word combinations that users enter in the search bar of the search engine. These terms are also stored in Google Ads for search network campaigns and are the basis for ad delivery. The goal is to achieve a high match between the search queries and the keywords in order to be visible in the search.

The keyword set must be put together sensibly in the first step. For this purpose, there is a dedicated tool in Google Ads, the Keyword Planner. The data of the Keyword Planner is intended to help users find out how many potential customers can be reached with a keyword before creating an ad campaign. On the basis of the main keyword, Google suggests a number of related terms, which are displayed in a table with information about the monthly search volume and competitor intensity.

Keywords added to an ad can have a different meaning by using different special characters. What the use of the different special characters in the keywords means is explained in the following table.

Special characters Keyword options Ad delivery
Keyword
Largely suitable
Ad is delivered for related search queries, the search query does not have to contain the keyword.
'Keyword'
Matching word group
The search query has a similar meaning to the keyword. Synonyms are covered here, for example.
[Keyword]
Exact fit
The search query has the same meaning and intent as the keyword.

Auction model for search network campaigns

When a user starts a search query, Google determines all ads whose keywords match the entered search term. In the following step, all ads that cannot be displayed are excluded. The reason for this can be, for example, the ad status ‘rejected’ or the defined location alignment.

All ads with a sufficiently high ad rank remain in the auction. This ad rank is determined by the following factors:

In order for SEA campaigns to perform well, the ad texts, landing pages and the booked keywords must match perfectly. The more relevant these elements are, the more favourable the CPC can be.

Chances and risks of SEA

Using search engine advertising offers a company many opportunities. For example, certain target groups can be addressed specifically or certain data can be collected that may be important for other measures. SEA also offers these opportunities:

However, the use of search engine advertising offers not only opportunities, but also risks. The following risks can occur when search engine advertising is used:

When is SEA useful?

In general, search engine advertising makes sense and can be implemented for companies of any industry and size. Particularly when organic visibility has not yet been achieved or has barely been achieved, search engine advertising can ensure visibility for relevant search queries. In addition, paid ads in search engines are very relevant, especially for targeted product searches. If SEO and SEA are pursued equally, the organic optimisation of the website can reduce the CPC of paid ads and thus save costs.

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