Could Discovery Ads extend reach and drive growth?

LifeSearch’s paid search account is well developed but is dependent on text ads to deliver leads from users searching for life protection products. Driven by our analysis of LifeSearch’s customer base we decided to test the more visual Discovery ads to see if we could reach the right audiences and drive cost efficient, quality leads, extending the capacity of Google paid search.

Discovery ads appear on Google inventory such as YouTube, Gmail and interests pages, the GDN network and can reach up to 3 million Google users. Ads can be created in static and carousel formats and each ad has a visual image, text and CTA.

There are several targeting methodologies available which we could test making use of the extensive customer profiling to establish exactly who, and where, the prospective LifeSearch customer was. These insights had been gathered for each product, and this insight was key to the development of our testing and optimisation plans.

Targeting techniques available include custom match (people similar to your existing customers), custom intent audiences (made up of people have recently searched for your product types), life stage targeting, affinity audiences and demographic targeting.

Bid prices tend to be lower than conventional paid search, and with the extra audience reach, visual element to the ads and targeting possibilities, our test campaigns were promising.

Setting new campaigns live is never the end of the story – that is when the real work begins. Results data from our initial weeks of activity showed us what was working and what was not. Weekly optimisations, testing new targeting attributes and different audiences enabled us to steadily improve results.

We also introduced tests for different creative approaches, refining the targeting for each new creative as the results data dictated.