How Is One Charged For Google Ads?

Google Adwords is one of your best digital marketing tools, with the potential of getting more valuable leads to your website.

As a pay-per-click online advertising system, you only pay each time a user clicks on the ad you’ve set up. But if you’ve looked closer at the service itself, you may have a lot of questions regarding how much your account can be charged.

There is this idea that advertising costs a lot of money, especially on a platform so competitive as Google. But that’s not always the case, and more often than not it boils down to how you set up your PPC campaigns.

Let’s discuss this.

Google’s Charging System

Unfortunately, Google Adwords doesn’t have fixed prices for its services, such as a membership fee of $50 per month or something like that. Your total cost and cost-per-click are not set in stone either and can depend on many different factors.

This is good and bad. It’s good because it means that by optimising your ads you can potentially pay less for the results you want, but at the same time, mistakes in your ad campaigns can end up costly.

Here are some factors that influence how much Google Ads cost:

• The keyword – some keywords are more competitive, as most people use them, which drives up their price. Seed keywords such as “insurance” or “marketing” often fit into this category;
• Maximum bid – higher bids can give you a better shot at Google delivering your ad and giving it a good placement, but it will also cost more;
• Your budget – technically, you never need to pay more than your budget, be it a daily budget or monthly. However, the higher the cost per click, the quicker you go through your budget;
• The click-through rate – if your ad doesn’t get a lot of results, your cost-per-click goes up. Google rewards ads that are optimised and relevant with better positions and lower costs;
• The quality score – your ads will receive a quality score from Google, which is like a mark on how good (or not) your ads are. Google makes it a priority to deliver relevant and high-quality content to its users, so it takes your quality score to decide what to do with your ads. Sometimes, a low-quality score can mean your ads cost more, or it can even mean your ads do not get delivered at all, even if you outbid your competitors.

How Do You Pay?

You can set up different payment methods in your Google Ads account, and decide when you pay for your PPC campaign. For Australia, there are two available payment settings:

• Automatic payments – after your ads run, the system will automatically charge your payment method;
• Monthly invoicing – you run ads and only pay once Google provides the monthly invoice. This is a common method for social media ads as well.

As for payment methods, you can choose from:

• Credit cards and debit cards;
• BPAY
• PayPal
• Backup credit cars – only if you’re on automatic payments. You can add an extra credit card as a payment method in case your first one cannot be charged for some reason.

PPC Management Is a Priority

Say you’re a small business with not a lot of money to spend on online advertising, but you do want to give Google Ads a shot. Should you be discouraged by the cost?

No. Google Adwords doesn’t even have a minimum amount it requires you to pay daily or monthly to run ads on the platform. But, if there’s one conclusion to be drawn from how you’re charged for your ads, it’s this: PPC management matters.

Google supports and rewards those ads that can offer the best experience to users. Because you’re charged based on ads performance, you have the opportunity to get amazing Google Ads results even if your daily budget isn’t very big.

Ad optimisation is a complex subject, but it often means:

• Choosing the right keywords to bid on;
• Targeting the right audience;
• Making your ad copy compelling;
• Optimising your landing page;
• Choosing the right goal for your campaign (clicks, buys, lead generation, etc.).

These are just some of the things you can do to optimise your ad spend in Google Adwords.

Can We Help?

Optimising PPC campaigns, understanding the metrics in Google Analytics, and making sure you get to the right potential customers doesn’t have to be such a complicated process.

We can help make it easier. Book a free 30-minute strategy session with Australian Internet Advertising to get started!