blog posts

Have you ever encountered ads in Gmail? Did you know that Gmail sponsorship ads are changing?

In December 2020, an item was added to the Google Ads support page in Gmail ads. Google has announced that Gmail-related campaigns will go into reading Only mode on July 1, 2021. As of this date, advertisers can no longer create Gmail-related campaigns. Also, advertisers can not edit any of their current Gmail campaigns.

If advertisers still want to place ads on Gmail, they should run Discovery campaigns instead of the previous methods. Gmail ads are the only way to create Gmail campaigns from July 1, 2021. This update can be an excellent way to increase advertisers’ access, and they can also test a new campaign model. The problem is that there are stark differences between how Gmail ads work with the current dedicated format and how Gmail is formatted in Discovery campaigns. We’ll show you the differences and tell you what to expect to lose when Gmail campaigns end in July.

What are ads in Gmail?

Gmail Sponsored Promotions (GSPs) use email marketing to target users and display ads in their Gmail inboxes. This is a sign of a promotional email, not a regular email.

Say goodbye to ads.

Say goodbye to Manual Bidding.

Discovery campaigns on Google Ads do not support manual bidding strategies. Currently, we can use manual bidding and CPC with unique Gmail campaigns. In the image below, we have selected a Discovery campaign goal from “Create a campaign without a goal.” Even with this option, the only bidding strategy we can choose is CPA targeting.

Of course, most of us are not the only ones who believe in manual offerings. We love testing automated bidding strategies. The only annoying issue is when testing different bidding strategies disappear. Manual bidding does not always work best. The same goes for automatic bidding. So now that we have no choice for Gmail campaigns, it’s a little disappointing. We have to deal with automated bidding strategies from July 2021.

Say goodbye to targeting the device as well.

Since Gmail campaigns are now part of the Google Display Network, we can control which devices see our ads. In our current campaigns, we constantly see the best performance on the desktop. We find that many more people store ads in their desktop inboxes, and this is just one of the metrics we use to optimize performance. Of course, from July 2021, we will lose control of a large part of our Gmail.

You can probably feel a template in this image. Yes, device-based targeting is entirely out of the hands of advertisers in Discovery campaigns. When you are in the campaign settings section of a Discovery campaign, you will not see an option to update the settings. (You can still categorize performance data by a device in the main interface.)

Ad rotation settings are lost.

In your other display ads, you probably test different variables of ads to see which ones work best. We can do the same thing with standalone campaigns. Depending on the size of the audience, we try to create three to four different ads for each. If we were to launch ads for an account for the first time, we preferred to choose an equal rotation in the ad rotation settings. In this way, we can give each different advertising model an amount of exposure so that we can make better judgments about performance metrics.

You can now add ad rotation to the list of settings not available in Discovery campaigns. With the automated strategy in this campaign model, advertisers can not adjust the ad rotation system no matter how many variables they want to test. The hands-free solution does not help us test our ads, but this is another thing we have to deal with with this automation transition.

The most significant change: The ad format is not the same

Just because Discovery campaigns are in does not mean that we can easily recreate our ads. Many differences can change the way you use Gmail in your strategies. These differences are the most significant reason we are upset about these changes. We feel this way because Ad Creative is the essential part of our Gmail campaign, and the components that are changing, in our opinion, give us less attractive ads.

The text components of your ads are different. 

There are two main types of advertising in Discovery campaigns. There is a standard Discovery ad and a Carousel ad. Your headline can have up to 40 characters no matter which option you choose. In Gmail campaigns, the number of headline characters eventually reaches 25 characters. Because of this difference, we constantly see Gmail headlines being cut off on mobile devices if we do not intentionally shorten the text to ensure the message is evident on all devices.

Gmail Custom HTML ads removal.

We do not want to pretend that we have used this ad format before, so it will not extend. Advertisers can go beyond the default Gmail ad and extend their custom HTML Gmail ad beyond the simple template to improve the user experience. The advertiser can upload a ZIP file containing almost all the files of the failed and open versions of the Gmail ad. We have to say that we have never been lucky enough to create one of these ad models for our customers, so we can not talk much about it, but if you use ads with custom HTML in any of your campaigns, Know that this feature will also disappear in July.

Ad changes are imminent.

We can not be surprised at how Google is going about campaigns. For years, the constant pressure to automate and adapt to a product has plagued us. Bidding strategies are being automated. Advertising models are automating. Even entire campaigns are trying to get automated. It was only a matter of time before Gmail suffered the same fate. We hope to continue to use columns in Google Ads, but it does not have confirmation yet.

source: https://dmacourse-com.translate.goog/blog/gmail-ads-going-away