What Are Google Dynamic Search Ads? Benefits and Setup

In running search advertising,
there are so many products and services that you cannot get a sense of which keywords matter,
or you want to start advertising but have no idea which keywords people might search for.

Running advertising for a site with that many products, or a large site rich in content, is hard work. On top of that, search terms shift from day to day, so knowing and controlling all of them is next to impossible.

What helps at times like that is Dynamic Search Ads (DSA).

This article covers Dynamic Search Ads in detail: how they work, their advantages and how to set them up.

1. What Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) are

Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) are a feature of search ads in Google Ads.

Instead of registering search keywords, you register the web pages you want covered.
For people searching with keywords closely related to those web pages, Google generates an ad matching the content of the site automatically and runs it, and the landing page URL after the click is chosen automatically too.

Normally there is work to be done in “choosing and registering keywords” and “writing and registering ad copy”, and Google does all of that for you.
According to Google, a full 70% of the keywords an advertiser sets up in search advertising do not match the terms people actually search for.

Seven out of ten search terms are missed when choosing them by hand, and enlisting Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) increases the share you cover.

It also cuts the resource that “choosing and registering keywords” and “writing ad copy” would normally take.

2. How Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) work

Dynamic Search Ads show ads through the three steps below.

① You set the URLs the advertising should cover in the console.
② Google crawls the URLs from ①, reads the information and indexes the content of each page.
③ When someone searches with a keyword closely related to the pages from ②, the headline and URL are generated automatically to suit that person and the ad is shown. (The description is still the one you set by hand, as before.)

The big difference from the traditional way of advertising is that you set only the URL of the page.
The URLs that can be crawled at ② are the following five.

・All web pages
・By category
・The landing pages you currently use
Page feeds
・Specific web pages

You can change this flexibly depending on your goal and how the pages are structured.

3. Advantages of Dynamic Search Ads (DSA)

3.1 You find keywords you had not thought of

With Dynamic Search Ads, the ad is built from the relationship between the indexed web page and the person’s search term.

That means ads can appear for specific keywords found on the page, such as a product number, and for long-tail keywords of three words or more.

And as mentioned above, 70% of the keywords set up in search advertising do not match the terms people search for.

So it also helps you find keywords that are hard to anticipate.

3.2 The work of setting up ads is lighter

The work of setting up ads, choosing and registering keywords and writing headlines, grows enormous as the volume of information grows, as it does on an online shop. Use Dynamic Search Ads and the work is automated, so there is less for the person running the account to do.

And because Google crawls the pages continuously with Dynamic Search Ads,
you can read demand in the market quickly and act on it quickly, which makes them well suited to sites that are updated often.

3.3 Results can be expected to improve

Pulling together how Dynamic Search Ads work, as described so far, they have the following characteristics.

• You can advertise on keywords with little competition (and a low cost per click)
• You can reach people searching with specific keywords, such as a particular product
• The landing page matches the search keyword

You can advertise to people who are already looking on keywords with a low cost per click, and the landing page fits closely, so you can keep the cost per conversion down.

4. Disadvantages of Dynamic Search Ads (DSA)

You cannot adjust the bid per keyword, so your ads will run on keywords you did not want to bid on.
Dynamic Search Ads are a very convenient feature that advertises for you automatically, but left alone they may end up bidding on keywords you never expected.
So you do need regular maintenance, such as adding keywords you do not want to appear on as negative keywords in advance. Exclude any pages you would not want set as the landing page URL as well.

4.2 You cannot control the headline

With Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) you cannot control how the headline is worded either, so copy may appear that differs from the image the advertiser is aiming for. The description you can set yourself.
At times the copy that appears reads oddly, and the wording may differ from the image you want to convey.

4.3 Any typos on the site get used as they are

If there are typos or other unsuitable wording on the site you have set up, it may run as it is, so you need to look over the site carefully beforehand.

5. Industries we recommend Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) for

Next, the industries we recommend for adopting Dynamic Search Ads.

・Sites where there is search demand for things like model numbers
On a site selling tools, for example, where sizes and names are fine-grained and the products are many, registering and bidding on every model number one by one costs a great deal to run, and things get missed. With Dynamic Search Ads you can cover model-number keywords and are more likely to bring people in without missing any.

・Sites with many products, such as online shops, and sites updated often
On sites where the number of products easily becomes enormous, such as an online shop, or large sites rich in content, choosing keywords and writing ad copy takes an enormous amount of time. With Dynamic Search Ads, though, pages are chosen and copy written automatically, which makes everything far easier to manage. And because you can read demand in the market quickly and act on it quickly, they also suit sites whose information is updated often.

・Sites where the SEO work has been done properly
Dynamic Search Ads read the information on the site you register according to the rules of SEO. Title tags and heading tags on the site are read too. So they are also ideal for sites where the SEO work has been done properly.

Have a look at whether the SEO work on your own site has been done properly.

6. How to set up Dynamic Search Ads (DSA)

Now let us look at how to set them up.

Broadly, it goes as follows.
・Create a campaign for Dynamic Search Ads
・Set up the ad group

If you are adding Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) to an existing campaign, start from creating the ad group.

STEP１ Create a campaign for Dynamic Search Ads (DSA).
(You can also create it from within the ad group.)

In the account concerned, click “Campaigns” → “+” → “New campaign”.

Select the goal that applies.

Select the “Search” campaign type.

Select the goal that applies and click “Continue”. (If you select “Website visits”, enter the URL of the site.)

STEP２ General settings

Enter a campaign name and uncheck “Display Network”. Click “Show all settings”.

Enter the domain you will use. Check that “Use Google’s index of my website” is ticked.

Tick the areas that apply. Set the language to the one that applies.

Enter the budget and the bid.
Set the bid lower than the keywords you already have registered, so that it does not affect your normal search campaigns.

Set up ad extensions as needed and click “Save and continue”.

STEP３ Setting up the ad group

Set the ad group type to “Dynamic”.
If “Change the ad group type?” appears, click “Continue”.

Set an ad group name and set which content on the website the ads should appear for.
You can be quite specific here, with options such as “this product category only”, but
to begin with, select “All web pages” so that the target is broad and the ads appear.

Click “Save and continue”.

STEP４ Create the ad

With Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) you do have to set the description yourself. Choose wording that works widely.
Once you have written descriptions 1 and 2, click “Save and continue”.

Click “Go to campaign” and you are back in the console.

After this Google reviews the ads. Normally it takes about an hour.

7. Points to watch with Dynamic Search Ads (DSA)

Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) also cannot be expected to work, and are not recommended, in the following cases.

• Sites whose content changes frequently (daily sales, for example)
• Sites made up mainly of Flash content or images
• Sites where a login is needed to view most of the content

(Quoted from:Google Help）

As described above, Google’s crawler reviews your site when you go live. At that point, if there are pages it cannot crawl (a 500 error, for example), the review fails. Check for errors in advance using Search Console or a similar tool.

This overlaps with the disadvantages, but keywords and URLs need regular maintenance. Because bids are placed across a wide range of keywords, set negative keywords and exclude any URLs you do not want shown.

Excluding URLs works differently from the usual process, so take care.
The steps are as follows.

① Select ‘Negative dynamic ad targets’
② Choose where to add it
③ Select either ‘Specify URLs individually’ or ‘Set rules for the web pages to target’ (if you choose ‘Set rules for the web pages to target’, everything below the URL you set can be excluded).
④ Enter the URL you want to exclude
⑤ Select Add
⑥ Save

8. In closing

This article has covered what dynamic search ads (DSA) do and how to set them up.

Dynamic search ads let Google generate and run ads automatically from the content of your website, which cuts the workload of advertising management dramatically for large e-commerce sites.

They also pick up keywords no person could cover by hand, so they are well worth using once you understand the disadvantages and the points to watch.
Use dynamic search ads in a balanced way and keep improving them to get the most out of them.