Ever seen Google Image Search Ads?

If you’re a Google AdWords advertiser you may have dabbled with Google Image Ads.

If you’re unfamiliar with the process, you basically upload your own banner, (or indeed build one yourself through Google’s Display Ad Builder) and then either allow Google to place your banners alongside relevant content (contextual Auto Placements) or, you select from a list the websites you’d like your banner to appear on (Managed Placements).

It’s a neat and relatively inexpensive form of “media buying”. We recommend and use it a lot mainly because in our experience it’s much more effective than a standard media buying exercise. The results in our clients’ analytics accounts are proof of that.

But what I want to talk about today is Google Image Search Ads, which are often confused with Google Image Ads.

The screenshot below shows you what they look like.

Google Image Search Ads show up when people are browsing Google Images (which a lot of people do by the way). Google announced around September last year that daily page views of Google Images were over one billion. YouTube just announced that they’re getting three billion daily page views, so it gives you an idea how many people are looking at Google Images.

Heaps.

Of course, with all these page views, the marketing people Google couldn’t help themselves – they created Google Image Search Ads.

Interesting too that they look uncannily like Facebook Ads don’t you think?

The opportunity here is that HARDLY ANYONE IS USING THEM! Even though they’ve been around for about a year, I hardly ever see a Google Image Search Ad when I’m browsing through Google Images.

I reckon the main reason why so few Image Search Ads are showing is simple. It’s almost impossible to find out where to make one in your Google AdWords Account.

Luckily I’ve figured it out. Here goes (lots of screenshots today to guide you)…

The first step is to create a new ad using Google Display Ad Builder.

The next screen shows which link to click to get started.

Once you’ve clicked the Image Search link, you’ll see the following:

Click the button and you’re nearly done. The next screen is where most of the magic happens…

Simply choose your AdGroup (I recommend creating a specific new AdGroup for these sorts of Ads, with its own keyword list) then fill in the blanks to create the ad, upload a 160px x 160px image (much more generous than Facebook’s measly 110px x 80px image size) and hit submit.

If you’re in a fairly non-competitive space, clicks will be pretty cheap, impressions will be excellent and you should get quite a bit of traffic. All right under the nose of your competition.

The usual Google Ad rules apply; weed out non performing keywords, test new ones, and try split testing images and copy for maximum click through rates.

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Chris Thomas heads up Reseo, a search engine optimisation  company which specialises in creating and maintaining Google AdWords campaigns and Search Engine Optimisation campaigns for a range of corporate clients.