Most marketers want new customers to engage with their ads. People who engage rather than just view your ad, are more likely to purchase your products and services. Display campaigns are also important when you want to reach new people at the top of your funnel. But to get engagement from an ad you can now use Googles’ Custom Engagement ads.

You may get more results if you use engagement ads. And results are the end goal!

First, Make Sure To Set a Campaign Goal

Finding out how to set up an engagement ad may be a little tricky. You have to select the “Product and brand consideration” goal. After you choose “Display” then add your website URL in the right field in the box that comes up.

This is the only way you can run and test custom engagement ads for your Display campaigns.

Google defines the “Product and brand consideration goal” as follows: The goal is to “educate users on your products and encourage them to explore exactly what you offer.” 

Everyone wants as many goal conversions as they can possibly get. But this campaign isn’t  for conversion-boosting.

This type of campaign is if you want to find a brand new audience ? and see if they engage with your business and brand. 

Engagement Display Ad Campaign Setup: CPE Bidding

Engagement display campaigns are pretty much set up the same as a display campaign. But there’s one major difference. Advertisers have only one option for bidding, which is CPE bidding (cost per engagement).

Advertisers only have to pay when someone engages with the ad. Engagement from someone happens when they hover over the ad and the ad then expands. 

Some advertisers are very careful and specific with this type of ad. They will only pay for a certain type of engagement like playing a video ?

Other advertisers will want to pay for all engagements including pausing, muting or closing an ad. 

If you use CPE be sure to test the engagement ads. Ultimately, you want to have quality leads engage with you who will be more interested in your products or services.

Custom Engagement Ads Target Your Audience Better

Engagement ads take more time to set up than a regular display ad. It’s because you have the option to add more elements to custom engagement ads. You want to have lots of elements on the ad so a user can see them and interact with them.

Always think about your target audience when you create these customizations.

Images and Video

The two main elements people engage with when they see you ad are images and video. Your custom engagement ad can have up to 10 cards which can be a mix of images and videos found on YouTube.

You can add multiple videos to the ad. And ecommerce advertisers can also add product feeds as an optional card. Just be sure to select a product feed in the campaign settings. 

Use these cards to manually enter additional information or captions. Which include a title, description, a CTA, and a URL. 

Advertisers pay ? for every engagement made by the user, but you have the opportunity to send users to several product pages on your site. You can describe your images in great detail on the captions for your cards.

When you personalize the captions you can create any CTA you want. You don’t have to select from a pre-selected list of CTA buttons. You can set so many different goals this way. You can send someone to read ? your blog or you can push product and services awareness.

Captions and CTAs

The second section when creating custom engagement ads, includes messages and a CTA for the whole ad and not just the image or video card.

This is where you put a kind of promo message for your potential customers. Make a list of the messages you’d like people to see and want them to engage with. Include offers, promos, or valuable messages in your list. Then you can test this list and see how much your messages caused engagement or not.

When you’re setting this up, you can rearrange the order of your messages and CTA elements. Put the most important messages at the top in the ad set up.

Customize The Image And Style Options

You get 3 more options to customize your ads. YAY! ?

If you want to stick to your brand colours these are great options. You can change the colour, fonts, and themes of your cards. 

Just click on the “More Options” link under your URL fields in the ad set up. 

Customize those ads and make them branded and beautiful. You’ll have more engagement especially after people get to know and see your brand more often. 

Header Images

The first place you can add your branding is to create a header image. This can be placed on top of the other elements on your engagement ads.

Invitation Images

A user has to hover the mouse over the ad before it expands. If you don’t want Google to take a preview of the ad as the main image, you can import your own image and therefore control the users first experience with the ad.

Use the most common display image ad sizes as the invitation image. This will help you control the entire engagement ad experience.

Custom Styles

Here is where you can add all the branding you want! 

You can change the colours, fonts, and themes of your engagement ads to match your business’s branding. You want all your branding to be the same wherever you are showing up online. All your social media images and fonts, and your website should all show a user the same branding. 

Engagement Ads Attract More Customers

If your target audience sees your ads that is very beneficial. But you may prefer to have people interact with your brand ?

If someone visits your site after engaging with an ad, they are more valuable than someone who visits your site after seeing a regular image ad. They took the time to expand your ad to see what you have to offer. Then they clicked on your CTA buttons. These people are very interested in your products or services. You can build great remarketing audiences from those users. They are just a bit more warmer and interested than other visitors.

Create and test a few different versions to see which ad elements someone prefers to engage with. 

Try out custom engagement ads and don’t forget to test different elements. Engagement ads are a great way to find new customers who will most likely purchase from you because they are more engaged with your ads and website.