DSA / Google Ads Dynamic Search Ads – Google AdWords DSA

Figuring out how to use Dynamic Search Ads(DSA) could help you to grow your business by targeting a wider audience you never knew existed.

DSA assists advertisers by expanding their search reach to encompass long-tail searches, which are not registered through current keywords. Also, new potential keywords for keyword campaigns can be discovered using this method. Even though DSA may not benefit everyone, it could still be helpful in a number of cases.

DSA not only enables advertisers to reach a wider search audience for searches that aren’t currently being targeted with keywords. DSA can also help identify new keywords to use in future keyword-based campaigns.

How do Dynamic Search Ads work?

Dynamic Search Ads use your website content instead of keywords for targeting people who are searching in Google. This type of targeting complements existing search campaigns that use keywords and can even be used to discover new keywords.

DSA automatically populates the advert title with content from your website that matches the search term, so you don’t need to specify ad titles or landing pages. Dynamic Search Ads automatically generate your ad copy and format by using content from your website that Google believes will be appealing to the searcher. For example, if a user is looking for “men’s hats,” it’ll select an image of men’s hats from your website and generate an ad headline like “Amazing men’s hats” as an attention grabber.

Targets Instead of Keywords

Google base targeting on dynamic targets instead of keywords. These targets can include categories of pages, individual pages on your site, or every page on your site. When your targets are website-based, Google’s site crawling technology identifies what search terms are best suited to display your ad based on the content of your website. Ad headlines generate based on the targeted user’s search terms which then increases CTR potential. Display URLs are also dynamically generated with the same logical reasoning.

The landing page that your ad uses is selected by Google based on the search query and what you have chosen as the target. For example, if you chose specific pages on your site as targets, then Google will only select one of those pages to send your ad to. However, if you chose a category or all web pages as a target, then Google could choose any relevant landing page on your site to send your ad to. The only thing that you’ll need to contribute manually for a dynamic search ad is descriptions 1 and 2.

Dynamic Targeting Options

The dynamic targets you choose for your DSA campaigns are crucial to their success. Here’s a breakdown of the benefits and differences of each type so that you can make an informed decision about which one is right for you.

Categories

Creating categories for your ad campaigns can be helpful if your website is organized into sections. For example, a home design company might have kitchen and bathroom redesigned as two separate categories. Doing this gives you more control over what visitors see on your site and allows you to change bids based on the priority of each category.

Specific webpages

With DSAs, you can choose to target either all pages on your domain or only certain ones. The former let Google crawl your site for relevant content while the latter helps optimize birds with one stone.

You can enter up to 20 web pages, or you can create rules that specify which types of pages within your domain should receive potential ad traffic. The following rules are available:

• “If URL Contains”
• “If Page Content Contains”
• “If Page Title Contains”
• “If Category Equals”

The “If Page Title Contains” rule would be selected for pages that you want your campaign to target, with “How To” entered in the available text box.

All webpages

If you want to quickly set up your campaigns but don’t mind giving up control, then targeting all web pages is the best option for you. Google will match the keywords to the content on your pages and show searchers the most relevant page for their search. However, be careful because they may land on a blog post instead of a product or landing page that you intended. There’s also only one bid option with this method so there’s no way to adjust bids for higher-performing pages.

Advantages & Disadvantages of DSA

The advantages of using DSAs make them a great tool to market your product or service. But, like any other marketing strategy, there are also some disadvantages—some you can avoid while others are out of your power. So let’s start with the good stuff.

Dynamic Search Ads are one of the most popular choices for advertisers because they can save a lot of time. With DSA, you build your ad groups and then let the system generate headlines and content to display to targeted users. It’s almost as if you can set it and forget it (although we wouldn’t recommend that approach). Plus, Google pulls relevant data from its organic search index, which means you don’t have to spend as much time selecting keywords, bids, or ad copy for each product or service.

DSAs are a great strategy to reduce your workload and get more clicks and conversions. They also complement your existing keyword-based campaigns, which broadens your reach even further.

The headlines on these ads are also much longer, which is more likely to capture attention and interest. I love the personalized ad approach too because it means your ads have a higher chance of resonating with searchers. Plus, each ad has offers and information in the format that the searcher is most likely to consume.

Close gaps in search term coverage: DSAs (Dynamic Search Ads) are beneficial for advertisers because they permit them to quickly close the gap in keyword coverage and product inventory. The tool can scan your website, or examine a page feed that contains all products. Furthermore, not only will it help you fill any gaps in coverage, but DSAs can also be useful for keywords that would typically be considered as having “Low Search Volume” and therefore cannot show up on Google Ads.

Ad creation is much easier: The headlines are automatically generated based on the product that is being searched for, which makes creating a unique headline unnecessary. The headline should be eye-catching to potential buyers and generate more clicks to your site..

Easy to set up: Dynamic Search Ads ease the workload of keyword and campaign creation. If you already have a good structure in place, DSAs are an easy tactic to set up with broad categories that can be running within 1 day.

Disadvantages

If you’re not careful, the downside of DSAs can be detrimental to your budget and overall campaigns. For instance, if you’re focusing solely on Dynamic Search Ads, then you may find that your campaign suffers as a result. This is because targeting a broad audience generally produces less effective results than narrowing your focus with high-value keywords.

Therefore, using DSAs alone may not give you the best CTR or conversion rate. Additionally, since DSAs copy content from your landing pages, there’s a chance it will use search terms that aren’t relevant to your target audience. This could result in mismatched headlines and ad copy. These problems are compounded when your website doesn’t have good SEO structure. Good SEO structure makes it easier for Google to pull data from relevant product pages based on customer searches.

One downside of DSAs is that you can’t always control your ad campaigns, but you can reduce the chances of error by adding a list of negative keywords.

• Not having full control: You won’t be able to manage what type of queries are matched to your content, so you should always review your search terms report. By blocking irrelevant searches with negative keywords, you can improve your chances of appearing for the right queries. Additionally, making sure your on-page SEO is good will help ensure that your targeting is accurate.

• Not having headlines match the ad: The headlines generated by DSA are based on your website content or product feed, so while you won’t have full control over the message. You can optimize and pull search term reports to get an idea of which ad headlines perform best.

• Low-performing search queries wasting budget: A final, common problem is that with DSA and other text campaigns, it’s hard to tell which product is getting the most clicks. Similar to how a few keywords get the majority of traffic in a text campaign, DSA can have issues where a few queries take up your entire budget before the stronger converting products are even searched for. That’s why having a good structure is so important and adding negatives both before and after launch!

How to set up DSA campaigns

To set up DSAs in Google Ads, follow these steps

1. Create a text campaign like normal and proceed through the settings
2. At the bottom, there will be an option to check off “Enable Dynamic Search Ads for this campaign”- make sure to select it
3. Input your website’s domain name and continue on to create ad groups.
4. go into each ad group and navigate to the sub-tab that says “Dynamic Ad Targets” 5 under that tab, you can enter “URL Contains” as an additional auto-target

After auto-targeting your individual ad group, creating a dynamic ad is easy. Simply write a message with up to 80 characters in the creative description line. The headlines and post-click landing page will be dynamically created based on the site or feed content.

How to optimize DSA campaigns

Before we get into optimization techniques for DSA campaigns, it’s important to understand the structural foundation that you should lay before even creating a campaign. As you look at your existing text campaigns and how they mesh with your business goals, ask yourself tough questions like “Where am I falling short?” or “How can I improve this experience?”— these are excellent starting points.

You can consider DSAs in the same way you would think about typical text campaigns: take into account what product or service categories you have and how detailed they are. After figuring out how many different product categories you have as well as their level of complexity, you will be able to understand DSA campaign structures..

1. Create a solid campaign structure

Auto-targets are a key feature of DSA campaigns, and they live in ad groups. To get the most control and best management possible, be sure to put each auto-target in its own specific ad group. This is especially important if you have a lot of products or product lines under one larger category.

For example, if an online bakery company creates a DSA campaign for different cakes, they would want to have individual ad groups for auto-targets. That way, each unique ad group can contain a tailor-made description line with Google supplying a dynamically generated headline.

2. Map keywords appropriately & create catch-all campaigns

DSA campaigns are designed to improve your ad experience and expand query coverage. Consider negative keywords when you create different DSA ad groups and campaigns; this will help you map user queries more accurately to relevant campaigns and ads. Consequently, DSAs are displayed based on the most relevant query with the most accurate ad.

If you haven’t done so already, build one final DSA campaign after you finish designing your campaign structure. A “catch-all” DSA campaign targets queries not included in other category campaigns. This might happen for various reasons, but a “catch-all” campaign should be designed to target all webpages on your site. That way, every page of your website is covered. If you realize (through search term reports) that this “catch-all” campaign includes products that should be mapped to other category campaigns…

3. Mine for new keywords and negative keywords

In addition to prospecting for new audiences and finding new keywords for your text ad campaigns, you can also mine your search terms report for negative keywords.

DSAs can discover new high-volume and/or converting keywords to add into your text campaigns. By adding these queries as actual keywords in separate text campaigns, you can more accurately track, monitor and optimise campaign performance and competition.

4. Highlight your promos and offers

By using DSAs to produce headlines, you can focus on highlighting promos and other business highlights.

For example, if you offer free shipping or quick delivery, be sure to mention this in your product description. This will allow the system to create custom headlines that better reflect what the user is looking for. In turn, this creates a more seamless experience and helps convert browsers into buyers.

5. Bidding

Just like a text campaign, DSA campaigns are priced on a CPC basis. The cost is calculated by taking the number of clicks your ad accumulates and multiplying it by the maximum CPC you’re willing to pay. With regular text campaigns, you assign bids to particular keywords; however, since DSA doesn’t use keywords, you’ll need to set bids for auto-targets instead—a list of different pages that can be targeted on your site. By setting bids on each auto-target ,your rank will then appear in results. You can use manual bidding with DSA, but we recommend using automated bidding for this wider audience segment.

While robots may be A.I., don’t be afraid of using Google’s automated bidding, which is powered by artificial intelligence. Smart Bidding has progressed a lot in the past few years and can now help advertisers achieve their desired back-end results, such as cost-per-acquisition or return on ad spend. We recommend that all DSA campaigns should use Smart Bidding through either target CPA or target ROAS. If you’re an advertiser who wants to improve your cost per acquisition, set up tCPA bidding.

We recommend using a tROAS bid strategy if you want to grow your sales while maintaining or increasing your spending. This strategy will analyze your past conversion data and performance to suggest a target goal.

As a best practice, start by setting your goal at the level suggested by Google, then evaluate after two weeks. If you’re seeing good results, adjust your target to reach even higher! Both of these bid strategies have proven to be very efficient and can help you scale up your campaigns efficiently.

Tips for Small Advertisers

Smaller advertisers can use DSA to create dynamic search ads that could work if they spend a smaller amount. The campaign you create using this technology should be ROI efficient for this to work well. If you’re spending a few hundred per month on PPC, then this could apply to you and you might find that DSA is useful. All you can really do is give the campaign a try and see if it works out at a positive ROI.

That being said, if you’ve struggled to incorporate Google Ads into your strategy in the past, it’s probably a good idea to miss this for now and instead focus on other areas of your business.

Keyword Discovery / Expansion

For any mid-sized to large advertisers thinking of using this technique, using it as a new angle for keyword expansion will likely get you the best results. You can use this technique to figure out useful keywords that you may not already have in your campaign, and then use search query mining to leverage the best performers. You will then be able to generate a great deal more relevant traffic that you may not have been aware of previously.

How to set up Google Dynamic Search Ads (DSA).

Step 1 is to create a search campaign, and then select more settings. Tick the box Dynamic Search Ads.

Step two is to create and then set up Dynamic Search Ad Groups

When building a dynamic ad group, you have three options namely: recommended, specific and all pages.

Step 3: is to create the ads. Some fields(rows) are dynamic, with others manual entry. Headline and landing page are dynamic, with the description line manual. 

Older AdWords DSA Interface

The older Google Ads interface had a tab for auto-targets. 

How to use Dynamic Search Ads – DSA Successfully

Below you’ll find advice on using DSA successfully.

Ensure Strong Supporting Content

Keywords, ad copy, to landing pages are all chosen in real time based on the content Google finds on your website. Your site must have enough strong content to be successful with the campaign

You can’t use Use Images

As with Google Text Ads, you can’t use images with DSA. If there’s no text for the tools to find, then your ad won’t be triggered by potential relevant queries. If you only use images to tell your story, then using DSA isn’t really for you.

With advertising, making all things visual can be tempting, as people are more likely to engage with content that contains an image. It also makes more sense to convey a message in a simple image rather than text. However other than Google Shopping, image ads are not yet available.

Up To Date Information

The information on your site must be reflective of your business as it stands at the moment. You don’t want to mislead your customer base, and although other companies may attempt it, doing so is not an option when you’re attempting to utilize DSA.

Are There Any Potential Pitfalls With DSA?

There are a few potential pitfalls with DSA that you should be aware of. You won’t always get optimal ROI as ceding full ROI to Google means optimal ROI for them rather than for you.

You should also ensure you’re wary of the pages or groups you include for consideration, as making these pages available could mean offering a poor landing page experience or even irrelevant targeting. This could be extremely costly.

You should also be wary of assigning too much of your budget to an underperforming campaign if you leverage DSA for keyword discovery.

DSA Tips: Getting the Most out of Dynamic Ads

We cover some of the fundamentals of using DSA.

Account Structure Tips for DSA

You should use ad groups to organise the themes of targets. Don’t simply use one ad group. Ensure you use one DSA campaign per language. You should split your targets into themed groups to ensure you have control over ad copy and query mapping. In short:

• Use recommended categories
• Only one DSA campaign per language
• Organise based on website structure, such as a specific service or your product category pages
• Split up your targets into themed groups to ensure you have plenty of control over ad copy and query mapping
• Begin by creating a single auto target for your whole site. Select the option to add all web pages, and then create more specific targets using website category pages, page titles, landing pages, and site content.

Campaign & Ad Group Structure Tips for DSA.

Use AD Groups to organise themes of targets. Don’t use one Ad group. One DSA campaign per language. Segment your targets into tightly themed groups to have as much control over ad copy and query mapping as possible.

• Use recommended categories
• One DSA campaign per language
• Organise based on website structure. (e.g. specific service or product pages)
• Segment your targets into tightly themed groups to have as much control over ad copy and query mapping as possible
• Start by creating a single auto target for your whole website by selecting the option to add all web pages. Set more specific targets based upon website category pages, page titles, landing pages, and site content. You. Segment your website targets into meaningful categories to match your website structure- and specific services, products or key website pages.

Organise based on website structure. (e.g. specific service or product pages). 1. start with broad targets, and use the search terms report to

Bidding Tips for DSA

• Bid lower on DSA website categories than traditional keywords
• Bid higher on a more specific target. (Catch all)
• Bid higher on high-performing categories
• Bid lowest on all web pages target.
• Bid higher on a more specific target. (Catch all)
• You can set targets based on different factors including categories, page titles, landing pages, and site content.
• Set targets based on various factors, including page titles, categories, landing pages, and site content.
• Bid higher on a more specific target.
• Bid lower on DSA website categories than traditional keywords
• Bid higher on high-performing categories

Want to learn more about bidding, check out our Google Ads Bidding Strategies Guide

Negative Keywords for DSA

• Negative keywords are more important as DSA does not have a match type.
• Add search terms that are performing well as keywords to the standard text ads/keywords campaigns. use negative targets (Exclude parts of the site- or use negative keywords)
• of dynamic search campaigns. DSAs are great because of the coverage but they can also bring in some less-than-relevant and high-funnel traffic that you might not want to bid on.
• Negative targets and Negative Keywords (Exclude parts of the site- or use negative keywords).
• DSA does not have a match type, and this makes negative keywords more important.
• Ensure you add search terms that are performing well as keywords to standard text ad/keywords campaigns. It’s important to note that DSA can bring in some less-than-relevant and high funnel traffic that you might not want to bid on, although they are still good for coverage. Learn more with our guide to negative keywords.

RLSA with DSA targeting Combination

Starting a new DSA campaign for past website visitors only is a good way to test DSA.

Grow your search audience in Google by retargeting past website users with long-tail searches or niches that are not covered by keyword targeting.

Make sure that remarketing audience for past website users is attached to the DSA ad group/s. Make sure the target and bid are selected.

Learn what your past website visitors are searching for in Google after they’ve been to your website. This is useful to expand your targeting with new searches and to identify new keywords with opportunities for the standard search campaigns.

Summary

DSA is an effective strategy for complimenting standard text ads for Google Search. You can use it in a number of ways to get more out of the Google Search network.