How to set up customized online-ads that self-adjust for each browser

Imagine creating an online ad that updates itself in real time for each individual browser, depending on what they are looking for, their geographical location, the language they prefer to use and the device they are using.

In other words, each time an online searcher types in a keyword relevant to your product or services, your ad will instantly self-adjust to their personal search criteria to become always up to the minute, highly focused, factually correct, instantly comprehensible and easily visible, no matter the size of the screen.

Isn’t it like a dream come true – an automated, marketing campaign that intelligently adapts to the individual searcher to provide directly targeted, device adjusted, streamlined, accurate information that seamlessly fits with what they are looking for (even in translation)!

Suppose, for example, that you’re doing a marketing campaign for a clothing company that has a series of stores across Canada.

You have a nationwide sale starting next week and at the exact same moment two potential clients living in Toronto and Vancouver both initiate a Google search for “cashmere sweaters”.

The ad that pops on the screen of the Toronto-based browser might say:

“Great Wisdek cashmere sweater sale starts in Toronto in 7 days”.

At the exact same instant, on the other side of the country, your Vancouver-based browser searching with identical keywords would see:

“Great Wisdek cashmere sweater sale starts in Vancouver in 7 days…”.

Tomorrow the same ad will read:

“Great Wisdek cashmere sweater sale starts in Toronto/Vancouver in 6 days”… “…in 5 days…”, and so on until the day before the sale begins, and then you can programm your ad to say:

 “Great Wisdek cashmere sweater sales starts in Toronto/Vancouver in 24 hours….”,  “…in 23 hours…”, “…in 22 hours…”, and so on!

Meanwhile, a different Ottawa based browser searching for cashmere gloves is seeing:

“Great Wisdek cashmere glove sale starts in Ottawa in 7 days…” and the French-speaking cashmere glove browser in Quebec is seeing: “Grande vente de gants en cachemire commence en 7 jours au Quebec”.

You get the idea.

You in the meantime are already working on your next campaign, confident that this one is safely set up to respond perfectly to  users’ search critera, geographic location and any other parameters you care to specify!

The greatest advantages of ad customisers are that:

• You get to tailor the message to each individual search or page.
• The countdown feature is a great way to draw attention to your special promotion, and to keep your ad up to the minute in real time.
• You can set up hundreds of customizable parameters but your viewers will only see the ones relevant to their own search criteria.
• You can speak to your online viewers in the language they prefer.
• Your ad will always appear picture perfect on the device that the browser is using at the time.
• Regardless of the fact that the ad changes for each viewer, you can still access overall reporting data as if it were just one single, unchanging advertisement.

How Ad Customisers work

It is all really just a more sophisticated adaptation of the AdWords keyword insertion feature that you may already be familiar with (the one where you use the {keyword:default text} parameter so that the targeted keyword appears in your text).

To the uninitiated, this basically means you write your ad text using curly brackets {} to enclose the element (or parameter) that you want to automatically adapt to each viewer or search.

You can use the {parameter} formula anywhere within Search or Display Network text but not for URL fields.

Then in AdWords you upload the information for different attributes you want to be inserted in the curly brackets in an ad customiser data file.

This means that you can fine tune your ads to respond closely to specific search criteria, for example:

• Perhaps you’re advertising a sale. You can customize your ad to display specific discounts with particular products, or to adapt your on-sale inventory periodically, or to self adjust within a specific limited time frame – perhaps in the period leading up to the sale after which you plan to switch to a new ad.
• Or perhaps you manage a wide inventory of products. You can set up brand related customisers so that when someone searches for a specific make of product (let’s say “Wisdek cashmere clothing) your ad will display with detailed information related to that item or range of items.

Customisers are a great way to show people that you have precisely what they are looking for – and if this item just so happens to be on promotion at the time as well, then there is even more incentive for them to buy from you.

You can target your ads to adjust for

• Keywords
• For ad-groups or specific promotion campaigns
• For updating repeating events (eg, regular end of month sales)
• For one-off events (eg, a closing down sale, with discounts increasing daily during every day of last month).

How to set up ad customisers

Ad customisers are easy to set up and very logical.

First you need to decide on the attributes and ad customizer data that you want use within your text (ie, define the words that will be handpicked so that each viewer gets a highly-tailored version of your ad customized to what they are looking for, where they are searching from, when they are searching, the keywords they are using, and the device from which they are browsing).

Next you write your ad text using the {curly brackets} to create the attribute spaces where the ad customizer data will be inserted.

For more specific step-by-step guidelines to creating ad customisers please go to https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/6093368.

The instructions are very clear and intuitive to follow – why not have a go at creating your own customized ad and see for yourself how easy it is?