Display Expansion on Search campaigns can help you reach additional potential customers on the Google Display Network using your Search campaign settings. This article explains how this expansion option works in Editor and how to manage priority settings and custom budget allocations.
How it works
You can enable Display Expansion for your Search campaigns by selecting “Enabled” from the “Include Display Network” dropdown when you choose to edit a campaign in Editor. The settings for your Search campaign will be observed in the Display Expansion wherever possible, including:
- Bidding and targeting, for example, contextual relevance.
- The overall campaign budget will be observed. You can control how budget is allocated to Display Expansion using priority tiers and an optional budget allocation percentage in Google Ads.
- Cost per conversion on Display may vary depending on your chosen bidding strategy, priority settings, and custom budget allocation.
- Ads will be created based on your Search ads, although you'll have the option to easily create image ads in the “Assets” section, which is under the “Campaigns” tab of your Google Ads account.
- It's recommended to use Responsive Display Ads to expand your reach even further and help improve your performance.
Your ads can appear when people search for terms on Google Search and search partner sites that match your keywords, and they can also appear on relevant website pages and apps on the Google Display Network.Google Ads distributes budget to the Display Network based on your campaign's bidding strategy, assigned channel priorities, and any daily budget allocations configured in your account or campaign settings. Search campaigns that have spare search budgets and are opted into Display Expansion can deliver up to 15% more conversions at similar CPA to Search.
Find the right audience
A Search Network campaign with Display Expansion increases your reach with no additional setup, and can help you find the right audience at the right place and the right time.
- Additional impressions and conversions: Search campaigns that are opted into Display Expansion will only serve on Display if we predict there's unutilized Search budget and no other Display or Universal campaigns of yours are competing for the same impressions.
- Performance: Search campaigns opted into Display Expansion and that have spare Search budget can deliver up to 15% more conversions at similar CPA as the current campaign's CPA.
- Grow your potential audience: By adding the Display Network, your ads can appear on the Google Display Network, allowing you to reach potential customers who browse or research similar products on a collection of more than 3 million websites, videos, and apps.
- Be strategic with little extra work: Since the Display Expansion is fully automated, your ads will be optimized to target across the Display Network with no additional setup.
Use responsive ads to reach more people
To expand your reach even further and help improve your performance, create a responsive ad for your Search Network campaign with Display Expansion. Responsive ads are a convenient, all-in-one format that serve across the entire Display Network. Using the assets that you enter, including headlines, images, and your landing page, responsive ads automatically adjust their size, appearance, and format to fit just about any available ad space. By creating one ad that fits almost any ad space on Display, a responsive ad can increase your reach and impact while also saving you time. If you’ve uploaded Google Ads image assets, from Search for example, Display Expansion may create responsive display ads automatically with no work required on your part. Learn more About responsive display ads.
Note: If you’ve been running Search Network campaigns and then expanding to Display, you may notice an increase in conversions and thus, an increase in daily spend. On average, your cost per conversion on the Display Network should be similar to that on the Search Network.
Instructions
Create a Search Network campaign with Display Expansion
- In Google Ads Editor, click Campaigns under the “Manage” menu on the left.
- Click + Add campaign.
- Select the “Campaign name” field and provide a name for your new campaign.
- Optional: In Editor, new campaigns are created with a default campaign name. You can change or leave this as is.
- On the right side, under the “Edit selected campaigns” tab, go to “Campaign type”.
- Select Search from the “Campaign type” dropdown.
- Select Enabled from the “Include Display Network” dropdown.
- Select your remaining campaign settings. Learn more About campaign settings.
- Click Save and continue.
Enable Display Expansion on an existing Search Network campaign
- In Google Ads Editor, click Campaigns under the “Manage” menu on the left.
- Select your Search campaign.
- Select Enabled from the “Include Display Network” dropdown.
- Channel prioritization and budget allocation controls apply to campaigns using shared budgets (of the same campaign type) and custom campaign experiments. Daily budget allocation is calculated as a percentage of your average daily budget on a best-effort basis.
- For bidding strategies like Maximize Conversions and Maximize Conversion Value, Google Ads prioritizes High priority channels before allocating remaining budget to Low priority channels, subject to any custom budget allocations you set. Note: Configuring channel priority tiers and percentage budget allocations directly within Google Ads Editor will be supported in an upcoming release.
