What are Google Discovery ads?

Google Discovery ads are a visual ad format that look like a social media post. They act in a similar way to the Facebook feed/post ad. Ads include up to 5 headlines to test the best one, an image or swipeable carousel of images (up to 15 to test), a landing page url, your business name and an optional Call to Action button such as “Shop Now” or “Get Quote”.

How are Discovery ads different to Search ads?

Whereas search ads come up when you enter a query, Discover ads show to people based on their past site visitation, app downloads, Youtube videos watched and map searches. This means Discovery ads are more about brand awareness, for people at the top of the purchase funnel.

Why has Google introduced Discovery Ads?

Google is contending with three fundamental shifts in search behaviour: the shift from answers to journeys; from queries to the queryless; and from the text-based to the visually-inspiring.

What type of ads can be placed on Google Discovery?

There are two main ad formats: Standard (single image) Discovery Ads This allows us to test up to 15 images in square, and or landscape. Discovery Carousel Ads We can upload between two and 10 images to be used as cards in the carousel

How much to budget for Google Discovery ads?

Google has recommended no less than a ratio of 70% spend on search/shopping ads, and up to 30% on awareness (ads such as Google Discovery or Google Display). So if you market in say one region, and spend NZD$500 a month on search ads, you might try $150-$200 a month on Discovery or Display clicks (allow extra for help to set up the campaign for you).

Are Google Discovery ads worth it?

Often times, clients need a greater stream of new leads and more channels than SEO, Google search ad and social media provide alone. At Alexanders, we have found Discovery ads are very cost effective for generating brand awareness (70% lower cost-per-click prices than the agency's search campaigns) and for generating top-of-the-funnel traffic.

How are Google Discovery ads different to Google Display ads?

Google Display ads are similar visual ads, but they are shown on Google partner sites. There are similar targeting options with the two. You can have a few more file formats with Display. Display ads let you have a clickable phone and location extension, but while you can’t have these on Discover, you can have a clickable lead form. You can run both at once.

What else do I need to do?

Your landing page for the campaign is critical. You need to answer their underlying need, and related questions, and offer something valuable in exchange for same email address or phone number. So we can help you plan a landing page as well as possibly a downloadable guide.

How long should you run a Google Discovery campaign for?

Can go indefinitely if your audience size is big enough, but I’d say a minimum of six weeks. The machine learning needs at least 3-4 weeks to hit its stride.

What kind of campaign ideas do you suggest?

Seasonal campaigns (Xmas, join a gym), launch a new product/service, catch people with a longer decision horizon so they connect early with your brand (construction), catch people with a problem that you solve but they don’t yet know how to solve it (sore back or neck - osteopathy). Rachel is good with ideas and suggestions.

What’s the next step?

Make a time with Rachel to discuss how you could build your brand with Google Discovery. Good times to catch up in her diary are 10am – 1pm Tue, Wed, Thu or afternoons on Mon & Thu. Ph 3488 477 ext 1, or 021 556 560.

Rachel Alexander - 17 Oct 2022

New GA4 tag required for your website

Google’s Universal Analytics tag (UA) will stop working soon.

Have you upgraded your UA tag to the new GA4 tag?

Google has announced that they are phasing out Universal Analytics (UA) on July 1st, 2023. The Google Analytics tag is what enables us to track the number of visitors, bounce rate, and pages people have visited on your website.  This tag is being replaced with a new “GA4 tag” which we are progressively installing in the sites we manage.

Rather than tracking sessions and pageviews, the new GA4 tag tracks users and events (an event is something such as a button click or watching a video). This gets around the awkward fact that “sessions” don’t accurately record the number of real people on the site, and that setting up tracking for buttons which click off to external booking sites has been technical.

GA4 brings a much better reporting interface, an action-based data model, changes to reflect user privacy, and BigQuery integration (which means we can do all sorts of interesting data dives); it also uses AI learning features.

Is there a fast, easy and accurate solution for migration to GA4?

If you are planning to do all the migration yourself then there is no fast, easy or accurate way. GA3 to GA4 migration can get challenging especially if you have dozens of tags and other tracking setups.  However, our team can make the migration fast, easy and accurate.

How much will it cost?

To audit your set up and insert the new tag takes around 3 hours, depending on if you already have Google Tag Manager installed (this is a piece of code that we can put in your website, that is like a “hold all” box for tags, making it much more efficient to add tags. If we manage your website, it’s likely we have already installed this for you.)

Once installed, all visits will be tracked in GA4 from the date of install.

Further customisation of goals and conversions can be set up, to measure things like downloads, ecommerce purchases, video watches etc.

Facebook Pixel

If you don’t have a Facebook pixel in your website, it’s worth doing this at the same time. If you are doing Facebook ads, then the new Business Ads Manager can be a pain in the ….. to get sorted, especially if you’ve had an agency managing your ads in the past. The current best practice is for you to “own” this set up, so you can invite or retract invitations to agencies as you see fit. We can audit if you have the Facebook Pixel set up when we do the GA4 tag. We can also address the problematic process of recovering ownership of your business ads account as needed.

What will happen after June 2023?

Your Universal Analytics properties will stop processing data into reports. From 1 July 2023, you will see zeros in your reports (only historical data will be available).
To make matters worse, Google will also delete all your historical universal analytics data in October 2023.

What happens to data in Universal Analytics?

Google has said you will be able to access your historical data for at least six months after Universal Analytics stops processing data. This means you have until the end of December 2023 to download any historical data and insights. After this time, you won’t be able to access any of your reports in Universal Analytics.

Can I upgrade Universal Analytics to GA4?

Unfortunately, you can’t simply upgrade your Universal Analytics property to a GA4 property. Instead, you need to set up a new GA4 property in parallel to your existing Universal Analytics property.

How do I set up and configure GA4?

We will do this for you. If you have any customized reports or dashboards, (think goal conversions, event tracking, filters, ecommerce tracking, etc.), then we will need to replicate these customizations in GA4.

GA4 vs GA3 (UA)

Google Analytics 4 is not just a minor tweak – it’s a completely new version of Google Analytics – totally reimagined from the ground up. Reporting interface, data model (how data is collected and presented ), configuration is different. It needs a totally different setup process.

If you would like us to set up GA4 tracking on your website then feel free to book your migration at Alexanders Digital Marketing. We can audit your tags to check if you need Facebook Pixel, Google Ads and or Tag Manager installed at the same time as the GA4 tag.