The year is 1995. Stanford students Larry Page and Sergey Brin (who reportedly described one another as “obnoxious” when they first met) develop a program, from their dorm rooms, to determine the relative importance of web pages.
The name Backrub hints that the duo had little awareness of the monumental impact their search engine would soon have. Regardless, it didn’t take long for Silicon Valley to take notice. Only three years later, an investor bought in for $100K, Backrub rebranded as Google, Inc., and an empire was born.
It’s not just that Google is now used as a verb: “Google it.” It’s not just that an adorable Italian grandmother has renamed it “Goo Goo.” It’s not just that it’s the most visited website in both the U.S. and around the world. And it’s not just that 3.5 billion searches occur on the platform every day.
That little experiment is the reason your home service business needs a Google Ads strategy.
In 2000, Google launched the world’s first self-service online advertising product: AdWords. With only 350 original businesses participating, the search giant’s first year of ad revenue barely registered. It earned a mere $70 million that year.
Of course, Google’s ad revenue has increased steadily since, exceeding $116 billion last year. Given that Google Search Network’s average cost per click is south of $2, it’s clear there are way more than 350 businesses buying ads these days. In fact, in 2017, nearly 7 out of 10 businesses bought pay-per-click (CPC or PPC) ads.
Clearly, Google AdWords was a successful product. But defying the conventional if-it-ain’t-broke logic, Google made a surprising announcement in 2018: they were rebranding Google AdWords as Google Ads. Why? We’ll get to that. But first, we have approximately 20 years of history to cover.
There’s quite a lot of history between the 2000 and 2019 versions of Google’s advertising platform. Time to geek out a bit: Let’s trace the evolution of Google’s ad strategy—starting with CPM and ending in machine-learning-driven ROI.
When Google AdWords first launched, pay-to-play was based on CPM: cost per one thousand impressions. That meant advertisers paid whether or not consumers actually clicked on their ads; their investment was based solely on how many times their ads appeared. As for the order in which ads displayed, that was determined by which businesses were willing to pay the most. No big surprise there.
In 2002, Google went after a competitor, CPC-driven Overture (later absorbed by Yahoo). In its announcement of their own CPC program, AdWords Select, Google also upended the highest-rank-to-the-highest-bidder formula in favor of relevance: “Select ranking is determined by a combination of ad performance (click-thru rate) and how much an advertiser agrees to pay per click. This advertisement ranking method ensures that users see the most relevant ads first.”
A year later, Google announced AdSense, a program inviting website owners to “serve ads precisely targeted to the specific content of their individual web pages.” The Content Network dramatically expanded advertisers’ access to consumers looking for their specific products and services.
After a quiet 2004, Google made loads of changes in 2005. First up was a move designed to improve the consumer’s experience. See, clever advertisers had managed to game the AdWords system by buying multiple ads targeting highly competitive keywords. So, when consumers searched for that keyword, most ads led to the same business. So, to display more options to would-be buyers, Google amended their AdWords policy so that only one ad would appear per URL, per search query.
A few months later, Google made a change to their advertisers’ benefit: They could now reach consumers by targeting specific sites on which they wanted to advertise, rather than having their ads only displayed on the SERP. (Fun fact: With these CPM ads, advertisers could include animated GIFs.)
Shortly thereafter, Quality Score began determining minimum keyword bid. Also, Google Analytics and AdWords started dating; that is, they got connected so you could see Analytics reports inside the AdWords interface. But that’s about it. The really exciting stuff happened much later.
In 2006, Google Local (essentially the precursor to Google My Business) was born, along with the related Local Business Ad. We saw a flurry of activity in 2007, including the beta version of Pay Per Action (CPA), which charges advertisers not for impressions and not for clicks… but for conversions (however the advertiser defines them).
Yes, 2008 gets its very own section here because so much happened:
Yes, we’re going to lump together nearly a decade’s worth of changes here because most of them offered the same benefit to advertisers: Getting in front of the right people at the right time on the right devices to make it more likely your ads will get seen and work.
In the last decade, Google has introduced:
Let’s pause for just a second here: If you’re not intentionally and frequently checking in on your marketing to see what’s working and what’s not, you’re not just spending money. You’re likely wasting it. We believe home service businesses should always know what’s going on with their marketing. That’s why we keep you in the loop, every step of the way.
And now back to Google updates since 2009:
In March of 2016, Google announced it would be embarking on an 18-month-long journey to overhaul AdWords, inside and out. And it wasn’t kidding. It took a bit longer, but in May 2018, the brand new, radically reinvented AdWords interface launched. Two months later, the platform changed its name from Google AdWords to Google Ads.
According to Google itself, the new Google Ads brand:
Represents the full range of advertising capabilities we offer today—on Google.com and across our other properties, partner sites, and apps—to help marketers connect with the billions of people finding answers on Search, watching videos on YouTube, exploring new places on Google Maps, discovering apps on Google Play, browsing content across the web, and more.
To some extent, the rebrand is primarily a name change, but it’s clear that Google Ads also simplifies the ad buying and tracking process by bringing everything under one roof. Also, specific to small businesses, the new Smart Campaigns program makes it easier than ever to benefit from an effective ad strategy.
Smart campaigns can take just 15 minutes to set up and continuously optimize your ads to meet your goals—while tracking performance and delivering clear, easy-to-understand results. That way, you can feel confident your advertising is delivering real results on your investment while you spend time doing what you love most—running your business.
It’s easy to feel frustrated with Google from time to time, but here’s the truth: When you understand how to leverage the platform, it will do a remarkable job of getting your home services business in front of the people who are looking for you.
No, investing in Google Ads isn’t cheap, but the cost of not advertising on Google is greater. The platform spends enormous resources to improve the experience for everyone—financially for themselves, sure, but also for you and for your customers.
Google didn’t just build the internet’s most powerful search engine, but the most targeted ad platform in history. If you’re in the home services business and not using it, you’re not invisible. You’re handing leads to your competitors.
While Google won’t (can’t) share all that information with you directly, it’s constantly improving its advertising platform so you can get nearly direct access to your audience based on what Google knows about it.
Advertising on Google can feel overwhelming—but that’s exactly why we’re here. Our team takes the reins so you can stop guessing and start seeing results. We’ve helped businesses just like yours achieve up to 8x revenue growth with smart, strategic digital marketing—and we’re ready to do the same for you.
Give us a call at 908.835.9000 or contact us online to connect with our team and get the conversation started.
Already a KickCharge client? Reach out to your account executive—they’ll connect you with the right expert on our digital marketing team.
Ryan Redding