Experiment Types

Optimize Text Ads

With’ Optimize text ads’ experiment, you can test variations of your responsive search ads.

There are three types of variations that you can create.

1 – Find and replace

The first ad variation you can create is to change the text you want to swap out in your ad.

This Experiment option is especially powerful when you want to test small changes to your ad without completely rewording everything. 

Here is an example of an ad variation that replaces the word “posters” with “prints” in all headlines:

2 – Update URL

This second option allows you to change the details of the URL.

This is ideal to A/B test different landing pages for an ad, as it allows you to split your traffic 50-50.

If you were to just duplicate an ad and use a different URL, the new ad wouldn’t always have the same visibility as the original one. With this experiment feature you can test both landing pages fairly.

Another option is to test different keywords for the Display path. Although this will likely have a minor impact on your results.

3 – Update text

The third option in ad variations is the “Update text” functionality.

This allows you to Add, Remove or Pin a certain headline or description.

This feature is good for figuring out what headline or description should be pinned to the top of your ad.     

Custom Experiments

While the Optimize Text Ads option is fairly limited with what you can change, Google also has the the option to select Custom Experiments. 

With this option the sky is literally the limit. You can change everything in a campaign including -

• Keywords

• Match types

• Ads

• Audience - audience segments with broad match vs no audience with phrase/exact match

• Bidding - conversions vs conversion value

• Bidding - impression share

• And more 

As mentioned in the previous checkpoint, test experiments in order of importance and move on to the next one after you get the results. Too many experiments at the same time can get messy because your testing too many base variables.

To use custom experiments, you’ll first need to select your “Base” campaign. This is your original campaign that will be used as a template.

Next, Google Ads will create a Trial campaign, which is identical to the original one, with the exception of whatever changes that you make.