Until recently, Google Ads was known as AdWords and is often mistakenly referred to as PPC. Google Ads is the central advertising platform that enables you to run key direct response advertising. This includes Pay Per Click (PPC), Google Shopping, GDN (Google Display Network) and YouTube Advertising.
Google’s advertising ecosystem is vast and deeply integrated into its entire product suite. According to a Bloomberg report, Google’s dominance in digital advertising is built on its ability to track user behaviour across search, email, maps, YouTube, and the wider internet. This data enables an unprecedented level of targeting, allowing advertisers to serve highly relevant ads at scale.
For businesses leveraging performance marketing with Google Ads, understanding how Google’s ecosystem functions is crucial to maximising return on investment.
Are Google Ads the same as PPC?
In short, no. PPC is one format out of a range of Google Ads products. It is well known and often confused because it was one of the first formats available when Google started to roll out paid search.
Creating successful campaigns through Google Ads is an art as much as it is a science. It requires the creativity to compose compelling online adverts, an analytical mind to ensure they appear in the right places, and deep strategic and user experience knowledge to create landing pages that guide conversion.
Integrated analytics
Google Ads integrates with other products such as Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Google Search Console & Google Merchant Centre. These platforms enable the creation of specific audiences for remarketing, product data feeds, and more granular e-commerce attribution.
According to Bloomberg, Google’s ability to track users across its ecosystem gives it a competitive advantage that few other advertising platforms can match. By combining search intent, YouTube viewing habits, Gmail interactions, and third-party site behaviour, Google builds a comprehensive profile of users that advertisers can target with pinpoint accuracy.
Scalable budgets
We’re used to working with budgets of all sizes to deliver results. The beauty of Google Ads is that the production cost is relatively low, and they can be switched off or scaled up at short notice. We do recommend, as with all digital marketing, that you try to keep it consistent.
Key Google Ads formats
PPC
PPC is short for Pay-Per-Click; text adverts that are visible for relevant, pre-agreed search terms or keywords, and you only pay the media cost if someone clicks on the ad. This format is particularly useful for service-based businesses. This search tactic gives you a lot of control over what you are visible for, but it must be consistently optimised from a copywriting and bid-management perspective in order to remain cost-efficient and effective.
YouTube advertising
YouTube established itself as the leading video content website in 2005. Combined with the soaring popularity of video content due to other social media platforms and consumer expectations from brands & influencers to produce video content, YouTube is now the second-largest search engine behind its parent company, Google. Data sharing between the platforms allows for highly targeted video content.
Google Shopping
Google Shopping is a great search marketing tactic for e-commerce businesses. It works in a similar way to PPC, except there is a photo of your product instead of text. Unlike PPC, visibility is not guided by specific keywords or search terms. Instead, the relevancy of your product is decided by Google based on how your product has been categorised and set up in a platform called Google Merchant Centre.
Google Display Network (GDN)
The Google Display Network (GDN) is an advertising network that enables you to reach over 2 million users with targeted display advertising. You can target based on interests, demographics, or e-commerce stage using remarketing audiences. The platform works by website owners ‘selling’ space on their sites, which advertising networks buy to serve adverts to visitors of those websites.
As Bloomberg highlights, Google’s acquisition of ad-serving technology like DoubleClick has solidified its dominance in programmatic advertising, ensuring that its display ads appear on millions of sites across the web.
Privacy and data changes
With privacy changes affecting third-party cookie tracking, first-party data strategies, and audience segmentation, ensuring display ads remain effective is now critical. Google has responded with innovations such as Performance Max (PMax), which allows advertisers to target users across all Google-owned properties while leveraging machine learning to optimise performance.
Additionally, Google’s shift towards a privacy-first web, including the phase-out of third-party cookies and increased reliance on first-party data, means that brands need to rethink how they gather and utilise customer insights.
Final thoughts
Google Ads has evolved beyond keyword targeting, with automation, first-party data, and AI-driven audience segmentation now playing a central role. The shift towards Performance Max (PMax) campaigns has further integrated machine learning to optimise across search, shopping, display, and video placements, making it an increasingly powerful tool for businesses looking to scale.
As Google continues to refine its ad ecosystem, businesses need to stay ahead of the curve by leveraging integrated analytics, refining targeting strategies, and making use of Google’s automation tools to drive efficient and effective marketing results.