How do Search, Dynamic Search, and Shopping Campaigns Interact?

Let’s begin by delving a little deeper into what exactly these campaign types are:

1. Search Ads: These are the regular Google Search Network campaigns which run on keyword targeting. You choose keywords that are relevant to your products or services, and bid to show on the search results page when a user searches for those keywords.

2. Dynamic Search Ads (DSA): Dynamic Search Ads are based on your website’s content. The key differentiator here is that instead of specifying keywords you want to target, you will specify the pages on your website that Google should use to target ads and search queries.

3. Shopping Campaigns: Shopping Campaigns are campaigns that target ads based on your product database.

How do the three interact with each other?

Google Shopping vs. Search Ads and Dynamic Search Ads

1. Platform: When it comes to Shopping and the other two campaign types, the primary differentiating criteria is the ad serving platform. Shopping campaigns use Google Shopping as the serving platform, whereas the other two target Google Search text ad slots. Though Google Shopping ads do show on the Google search results, the Shopping ads are in a separate auction with other Shopping ads.
2. Targeting: The targeting for Shopping is based on your data feed and your products. Google Shopping uses your item categories, descriptions, titles, and other attributes to verify and serve your ads.
3. Competition: Shopping Campaigns do not compete with your Search or Dynamic Search campaigns. Both your text ads and your Shopping ads are eligible to show for a single search result.

Search Campaigns vs. Dynamic Search Ad Campaigns

1. Platform: Regular text ads as well as Dynamic Search Ads use the Google Search Network as their serving platform.
2. Targeting: Search campaigns use specific keywords, whereas Dynamic Search Ads use your website or specific pages from your website for targeting.
3. Competition: Dynamic Search Ads and Search ads do compete with each other since the serving platform is the same.  Hence, one user search could show either a regular text ad or a Dynamic Search Ad.

The Three-Fold Strategy

1. Drive high Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) with Shopping: Use shopping campaigns for great ROAS and high conversion rates.
2. Capture your market with Search: Use Search campaigns to target exact keywords that will increase     your reach and engage potential customers.
3. Enhance reach at reduced costs with Dynamic Search Ads: Use DSAs to reach people searching for phrases you haven’t thought of, which might have lower CPCs or higher conversion rates. Don’t forget to add negatives for keywords already used in your Search campaign.