What Is Search Ads 360 & Why You Need It

September 30th 2020 by Director of Search Engine Marketing

When deciding on the best digital marketing agency to support your business’s digital growth, it's critical to consider if they are utilizing the best advertising technology to run your campaigns. If not, you could be losing out on traffic, leads, and even sales for your business. We all know that when it comes to Ad Tech, Google is a world leader. With most of your customers searching on Google as well, advertisers are much more inclined to use their proprietary products to identify the biggest opportunities.

Google currently offers two solutions for Search Engine Marketers in terms of campaign management and optimization. Google’s two products, Google Ads (Adwords) and Google Search Ads 360 (SA360) are both powerful but have their own distinct benefits and differences.


What is Google Ads (Adwords)?

Google Ads, otherwise known as Google Adwords, is Google’s advertising system in which advertisers create, manage, optimize, and adjust their Search Engine Marketing (SEM) campaigns. Google Ads is essentially one of Google’s search engines that is supported by SA360, but they are not the same product.

Advertisers use this tool to bid on certain keywords auction-style in order for their clients' ads to appear at the top of Google’s search results. Any advertiser can use and access Google Adwords for free, as long as they have the budget to run the campaigns.


What Is Search Ads 360 (SA360)?

Search Ads 360, SA360, or DoubleClick Search, is Google’s enterprise-level search management platform that helps agencies and marketers efficiently manage and scale some of the largest search engine marketing campaigns in the world! Simply put, SA360 is Google’s advanced search engine management solution that allows businesses to access multiple ad accounts and campaigns in Google Ads, across multiple search engines, in one single integrated interface. SA360 is not a free solution and advertisers are charged a platform fee plus a percentage based on your spend.


So What’s the Difference?

Search Ads 360 offers advertisers the benefit of streamlined management of your campaigns through Google Ads across multiple search engines and media channels. Without Search Ads 360, advertisers are forced to manage ads and keywords on each search engine and platform. This makes it much more difficult to analyze performance across multiple channels and make real-time adjustments to campaigns based on findings.

Google Ads is one of many search engines that SA360 can support through their platform. SA360 also powers the following engines, giving you a distinct advantage over the competition:

  • Google Ads
  • Bing Ads
  • Yahoo Japan
  • Baidu
  • Yahoo! Gemini

Why Do You Need SA360 for Your Campaigns?

If you want to get the best ROI on your paid search campaigns, making sure that your digital advertising agency is utilizing SA360 is critical, no matter if you're marketing a car dealership, law firm marketing, any other local business, or even an enterprise business.

Managing ad campaigns through Search Ads 360 rather than the individual platforms also means your partner has access to more advanced features, which can be used to improve costs and conversions for your business. With Search Ads 360 you save time, reduce friction, and have the ability to make better decisions about your campaigns in real-time.


Your SEM Campaigns Could Benefit From the Following:

1. Centralized Operations

With the ability to manage all campaigns across all channels in one place, has the distinct benefit of giving you speed-to-market. Timing is everything and could be the difference between your customer choosing you over your competitors.

2. Omni-Channel Optimizations

Imagine you make one small change to your strategy, and you have to make the update to each engine or channel individually. This is the reality for many advertisers. SA360 allows you to make changes across multiple channels with the push of a button, saving your analyst time to make more optimizations to your campaigns.

3. Automated Bidding

SA360 offers a Smart Bidding feature that uses machine learning to analyze and adjust the real-time performance of your ad campaigns. This tool automates keyword bidding to improve the performance and return on your Search Engine Marketing (SEM) campaigns.

4. Real-Time Reporting

Search Ads 360 offers highly customizable cross-channel reporting, allowing you to easily show and explain top-level paid search advertising performance by search engine and by individual campaign level and keyword performance.

5. Ad Copy Testing

Search Ads 360 provides advertisers with a unique experiment tool that allows you to test different types of ad copy to see what performs best for your campaigns. In the past, this would require manually testing and data pulls, but with SA360 you can easily house and test live ad copy across multiple engines in one place.

If your digital marketing agency isn’t utilizing the best ad technology in the industry to run your Search Engine Marketing campaigns, you could be leaving money and potential customers on the table. Search Ads 360 has all the features that you need to get fast insights, improved collaboration, and better results. Contact Click Here Digital today and learn how you could benefit from having your SEM campaigns on SA360.

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