So you’re trying to see your ads on Google? Well first off, that’s annoying, because every time you click on your own ads you’re wasting your budget. Secondly, the act of maximising visibility and the act of optimising for conversions are two different and contradictory bid strategies.
Maximise Clicks vs Maximise Conversions
The maximise clicks bid strategy will try to get you as many clicks as possible for what you’re bidding. To maximise its effectiveness you need to use exact match keywords, and you can even set a bid cap if you think on some level that your budget is too low to be really competitive. Exact match means in theory that you will only match to the exact wording of what you’re bidding on, which is so restrictive that it boosts your visibility. In practice however, exact match keywords can also match to whatever the system deems similar, and this can even include semantic matches. Which is why you still need to keep an eye on those search term reports.
The maximise conversions bid strategy uses signals from your conversion tracking to optimise for people more likely to convert, resulting in a higher cost per click, less traffic, but more conversions in most cases. There are exceptions, such as when someone truly understands bottom of funnel traffic for their industry that maximise clicks can outperform when tightly focused on keywords that actually matter.
Google Ads Dashboard: The First Place to See Your Ads
Your Google Ads dashboard is the first place you’ll see your ads. Simply select any ad for editing and the editing screen will show you an ad preview. As for metrics, you’ll want to look at the time of day report to see how long your ads last for the day, and the matched locations report to understand in which locations your ad is showing.
Google Ads Transparency Center: The Second Place to See Your Ads
The Google Ads Transparency Center is a library of ads running on Google. Use it to see which combinations of your ads are live. A good use case here is when someone is paying for ads but does not have access to their own Google Ads dashboard beyond billing. The Google Ads Transparency Center will let you see what your ads look like on the platform. https://adstransparency.google.com/
Meta Ads Library: The Place to See Your Ads Running on Meta Placements
Let’s not forget Meta Ads, because they also have an ad library of running placements. You can access it here https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/.
Some Reasons Your Ads May Not Be Showing
- Your budget is too small relative to the amount of people ready to click.
- You’re bidding too low, which means your ads are struggling to show because your focus is saving budget to get more clicks per day rather than focusing on showing with frequency.
- You’re in the wrong location. If you’re at B but your ads are at A, you won’t see them.
- Your bid strategy is optimising for conversions and you’re not in the market.
- Your ads or account are disapproved. It’s unlikely you wouldn’t know about this, but it’s worth mentioning.
