Dynamic Keyword Insertion – Are (DKI) Ads for Everyone?

Contributors: Amol Ghemud
Published: August 14, 2018

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Dynamic Keyword Insertion:

Reaching people with Dynamic Keyword Insertion ads or any ads as they search for your products and services can be a moving target. It’s difficult to catch up when user’s queries evolve, your site changes, inventory shifts, you expand your business to new markets.

Google Adwords words enables you with different campaign options like Search, Display, Call etc.

Within Search campaign you can create different text ads.

Dynamic search ads

Text ads have 3 main sections: headline text, a display URL, and description text.

  1. Headline – Having users search queries in headline increases the chances of clicks.
  2. Display URL – It shows where users will land on. It have two parts. First part is your domain while second part called as “path” is optional. Path guides users which internal pages they could possibly land on. Smart usage of search queries AKA keywords here provoke user to click.
  3. Description text – This allow advertisers to include their product/service USP’s and strong Call-to-actions.

All above files have following characters length limitations –

Text ads

Dynamic Search Ads works best when you want to reach customers without maintaining complicated keywords lists.

What is a dynamic keyword insertion ad?

Keyword present in your ad copies increase the number of click to your ad as users search with similar search queries. This also help you to reduce your cost per click as you smartly increase your quality score.

Dynamic Keyword insertion lets you automatically update your ads with the keywords in your ad group that caused your ads to show. This can help make your ads more relevant to users searching for what you offer.

Let’s say you’re advertising at google as Growth Hacking Agency. You could use a keyword insertion code in your ad headline:

Headline: Contact {KeyWord:Growth Hacking Agency}

AdWords will try to replace this code with one of your keywords in your ad group (“best Growth Hacking Agency,” “Indian Growth Hacking Agency,” “top Growth Hacking Agency”), but when it can’t, it’ll use the phrase “Growth Hacking Agency.”

Note that the user’s search term isn’t always the same as the keyword.

How dynamic keyword insertion ad works?

Keyword insertion can help improve your ads’ relevance to potential customers by automatically updating your ads with the keywords in your ad group that caused your ads to show.

When someone searches on Google with keywords closely related to your website or Ad, your Dynamic Search Ad may show.

When your ad shows, your headline and landing page are automatically generated based on the particular search terms that the user entered. In other words, your headlines are dynamically added to be of greater relevance for each individual search.

Example. You own an international Jewelry Shop. Someone searching on Google keyword tool for “Jewelry Shop in India” sees your ad with the headline “Jewelry Shop – India,” clicks your ad, and then lands on the site of your top India Location.

In this way, Dynamic Search Ads can quickly direct potential customers to what they want on your site.

Keep in mind that you retain control of your ad’s description and source of your site-based targeting.

How do I create dynamic keyword insertion ads? (AdWords screenshot)

Creating Dynamic Keyword Insertion is as simple as creating normal text ads. Follow these steps and next time create an useful DKI Ad for your campaign.

1. Log In to AdWords account and navigate to Adwords signin page, the google ads campaign/google ad group where you wish to create Dynamic Keyword Insertion Ad.

2. Go to Ads and select text ad.

3. After you enter ad text, type a brace ‘ { ‘. A drop down menu would appear. Select ‘Keyword Insertion.

dynamic keyword insertion

4. Now, in the “Default Section”, type words to be appeared when the text can’t be replaced by keyword.

5. Choose capitalization for you keywords.

i. Title Case: This will capitalize the first letter of all keywords. For example, “The Counter Medication.”

ii. Sentence Case: Only the first letter of the first keyword will be capitalized. For example, “The counter medication.”

iii. Lower Case: No letters will be capitalized. For example, “the counter medication.

6. Finally, Click Set.

7. Fill the remaining sections (URL, Path, Description) as you do with normal text ads.

Common Problems Associated With Dynamic Keyword Insertion Ad

Even though one setup Dynamic Keyword Insertion Ad properly, some people still complain that their ads do not work. Relax, this is the common issue many people face while setting up DKI Ads.

Checkout the following list. These could be one of the reason why your dynamic search ads do not work.

Too many characters: Ads can’t contain more than 30 characters in each headline, more than 80 characters in the description line, or more than 15 characters in the URL path.

Incorrect grammar: Avoid the use of phrase that contradicts your syntax.

Nonsense: Inserted keywords need to make sense in context.

Misspelled words: It is better to remove misspelled words from your keyword, (Though AdWords accepts misspelled words, but it does not show them in ads).

Landing page doesn’t work: Make sure your landing page URL can support dynamic text, or leave keyword insertion out of your landing page URL.

Adult content: Any keyword that promote Adult content should not be used.

Dynamic Search Ads: As dynamic search ads do not use keyword targeting, DKI won’t work with them. Even If you’ve set up keyword insertion with Dynamic Search Ads, the default keyword insertion text will be included in your ad description.

Why you should use dynamic keyword insertion ad?

1. High Relevance

With dynamic keyword insertion, relevancy of ad with the search term increases hence Ad would show searched keyword in the text. Increase in relevancy will definitely lead to better user experience.

2. More CTR

CTR is directly related with relevancy of your ad. An ad will have more CTR given the fact that Inserted keywords match with search terms. More CTR will increase your chances of getting conversions.

3. High QS

Quality score is the product of relevancy of search terms with Ad text, CTR and user experience on landing page. With Dynamic keyword insertion, high relevancy & higher CTR is observed. This in turn increases Quality Score of your keywords.

4. Saves Time

Definitely. No one will spend extra time on making Ads relevant to each of your included keywords. Create one Ad copy, use Dynamic keyword insertion.

Why you should be careful while creating dynamic dynamic keyword insertion ads

Having listed all the benefits of Dynamic Search Ads, there still is problem that you need to really really consider. The important point you need to consider here is on the targets that you select and how they will help you achieve your goals. The better defined your ad targets, the better your results will likely be.

Such is an example given below which shows how incorrectly Dynamic Search Ads were used and how it unaccountably it resulted.

Recently doing competition research for one of our client we learn ‘The Hindu’ – English-language Indian daily newspaper used Dynamic Search ads incorrectly while targeting competition keyword.

Times of india

Problem : Users searched for competitor keyword, in this case – Times of India

Campaign: The Hindu had ad copy for DKI ad group which have “Times of India“ as a keyword.

Mistake : As system could think “Times of India” is the correct keyword

Takeaway : Negative keywords are super important while creating Dynamic Search ads!

Another example of the same competitor – Times of India, is that they used different strategy to compete for their competitor – Hindu. They set ‘mobile app installs’ campaign and used competitor’s keywords for targeting.

The Hindu

Important points to be considered while creating dynamic dynamic keyword insertion ads:

  • Create targeting groups based on user behavior

Create dynamic ad targets that are more broadly defined to help increase your incremental traffic. If you create a target with too few indexed landing pages, your ads might not get any incremental traffic.

  • Optimize results by doing bid adjustments:

You can set bid adjustments to increase or decrease your dynamic ad target bids by a percentage. Bid adjustments can give you more control over when and where ads are shown.

  • Exclude traffic you don’t want to be captured by your DSA campaign

Creating exclusions for pages that contain words like “sold out” or “unavailable” is strongly recommended. This will prevent customers from seeing pages on your website that contain products they won’t be able to buy.

  • Find terms you want to exclude by adding negative keywords.

Create negative targeting for Dynamic Search Ads so that your ad won’t be shown for incorrect queries.

Conclusion

Dynamic keyword insertion is an excellent way to make relevant ads with user’s experience. Think of yourself. You search for a random thing and suddenly see an Ad speaking to your query, why wouldn’t you click on it. With increase in Quality Score, there is better chance of high Ad rank and so have more conversions.

Have you ever used dynamic keyword insertion in Ad? Share your experience on comment below.

Useful link – Google ads campaign support

FAQ

1. How do you write a dynamic keyword insertion?

  • Inventory the keywords you want to target with your dynamic ad group. Conduct keyword research to find out what terms people in your business search for.
  • Establish a purpose for your advertisement. What do you want your advertisement to accomplish? 
  • Select materials (and ensure that they coordinate!).
  • Run your advertisements and monitor the outcomes.

2. What is dynamic keyword insertion in responsive search ads?

You can instantly update your ads with the keywords from your ad group that made them appear if you use keyword insertion. Doing this can make your ads more pertinent to those looking for what you have to give.

3. What are the benefits of dynamic keyword insertion?

In your subsequent ad campaign, you should attempt dynamic keyword insertion for the following main reasons:

  • More focused aiming.
  • Bolded keywords,
  • An improved quality score, 
  • A time saver, and more!
  • Long-tail keyword bids, 
  • Broad match keywords, 
  • Targeting misspellings, and more.

4. What is the difference between RSA and DSA Google Ads?

The message is more tailored to the search query than with Expanded Text Ads, so Responsive Search Ads (RSAs) have a comparable feel to Dynamic Search Ads. (ETAs). However, RSAs use copy that the advertiser supplies within the Google Ads platform, whereas Dynamic Search Ads use content that is pulled from a website to show in the ad.

5. How do I create a dynamic ad in Google Ads?

  • Choose “New Ad.”
  • Choose Dynamic Search Ad.
  • Simply input your description text; the headline, final URL, and display URL for your Dynamic Search Ad will be dynamically generated.
  • Select Save and Next.

About the Author

Optimizer in Chief

Amol has helped catalyse business growth with his strategic & data-driven methodologies. With a decade of experience in the field of marketing, he has donned multiple hats, from channel optimization, data analytics and creative brand positioning to growth engineering and sales.

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3 responses to “Dynamic Keyword Insertion – Are (DKI) Ads for Everyone?”

  1. cialis says:

    You are so awesome! I don’t think I’ve read a single thing like that before.
    So nice to discover somebody with a few unique thoughts on this issue.
    Really.. thank you for starting this up. This site is one thing that is needed on the web,
    someone with some originality!

  2. Yilmaz Sarac says:

    Thank you for the post Kashif, this is clear information.

  3. Interesting to say the least. Will think this one over.
    Cheers

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