3 minutes

Getting the most out of Google Discovery Campaigns

When it comes to Google Ads campaign types, there's a lot to learn. Understanding a little more about what each of them can offer your brand can help ramp up your PPC performance (trust us!). Our resident Google Ads extraordinaire, Laura Williams, takes us through the key need-to-knows of immersive Discovery Campaigns and how to get the most out of them.

What Are Discovery Campaigns?

Discovery Campaigns allow you to share your brand across Google’s products and feeds when customers are open to discovering new products and services.

They can reach up to 3 billion customers worldwide across the YouTube Home and Watch Next Feeds, Discover and the Gmail ‘Promotions and Social’ tabs - all from a single campaign.

With 59% of consumers saying they have found their favourite brands whilst doing something like...

Watching videos on mobile

Catching up on interests

Browsing emails

And 90% of people say they discover new brands or products on YouTube… Why wouldn’t you want to target these customers?

How to use Discovery Campaigns to get the best results

Discovering A Goldmine Of Potential New Customers 

The most important thing is to understand that customers being targeted through Discovery Campaigns aren’t actively browsing for products as they’re shown your ads; they’re on YouTube, Gmail, the Discover feed etc. This means that these customers aren’t actively looking at purchasing as they’re shown your ad, as they are more likely to be if they were actively searching for products or services on Google.


However, 85% of consumers will take a product-related action within 24 hours of discovering a new product - but this doesn’t mean that the last ad they saw is when they’ll convert.

Discovery Campaigns help to build exposure of your brand, products or services to new customers, or retarget to existing or past customers.

As a result, you may not see a strong ROAS from this campaign if you’re only measuring on a Last-Click basis (which ad saw the last click before purchase).

Rather, other campaign types, in particular Search, oftentimes see a boost in sales - Search on average sees a 12% increase in conversions as a result of implementing Discovery Campaigns.

Reviewing ‘Assisted Conversions’ and ‘Top Conversion Paths’ within Google Analytics can therefore help you to track customer’s journeys, and what sort of impact Discovery Campaigns really have on buyer purchasing behaviours.

Use Visually appealing Imagery assets...

You’re targeting customers as they’re browsing the web, on platforms that are very visually appealing such as YouTube and Discover.

You MUST, therefore, also use visually appealing Image assets to stand out on such platforms.

We recommend using images/videos that showcase your top performing products, as well as USPs to make the customer want to click through to your website.

Avoid text heavy imagery

Don’t rely on overcrowded text-heavy imagery - too much text tends to lead to lower CTRs on average for Discovery Campaigns so don't waste budget on graphically led 'promo' banner type imagery that just won't deliver the results. The more eye catching the better here.

Layer your Audiences...


With Discovery campaigns, you can retarget past visitors to your site and customers who have already purchased from you through Customer Match Lists.

Similarly, you can also target customers who haven’t interacted with your site, but are interested in your range of products through targeting with ‘Similar to’ audiences, or even using Custom Segments to target customers who have searched for specific queries on Google Search before.

For example, if you’re a mens footwear retailer, you could use Discovery campaigns to show ads to customers who have in the past 30 days searched on Google for ‘Mens Shoes’, ‘Mens Boots’ and so on.

These customers may not have clicked on an ad of yours previously, but are most likely in the market for new shoes.

But be careful with them too

Don’t overuse low-funnel cold audiences - make sure you’re targeting customers most likely to purchase or are most interested in your products which is likely to lead to a sale.


For example, don’t target customers who have searched for ‘Womens Shoes’ or simply ‘Shoes’ if you only sell Men’s Footwear.


Finally, review your settings

Don’t use Audience Expansion initially. Audience Expansion is a default setting that shows ads to customers outside your defined audience lists. This can lead to targeting customers who are less likely to convert, increasing costs and can mess with optimisations.


There's always more to learn, and we're always up for a chat on PPC tools to better your performance. If you're looking for somewhere to start, get in touch with our team using the button below 🚀. 


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