Google AdWords™ For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Creating Your First Campaign

Your AdWords account is structured in two levels of organization: campaigns and ad groups. Campaigns are containers in which you place ad groups, which are the functional units in which you show ads and select and bid on keywords. A campaign is defined by a set of settings that apply to all ad groups in that campaign.

Before you can start advertising, you must first create a campaign and populate it with at least one ad group. To start, we'll set up a dummy campaign that you will pause immediately after creating it. That's so we can focus on the structure, and not worry at all about the content.

Google makes creating your first campaign as easy as possible. Here's all you have to do:

1. Click the Create Your First Campaign button.
2. On the next page, click the Campaign Type button and select Search Network Only from the Campaign Type drop-down menu.

   Start with Search Network Only because the first market research you'll do involves searches and keywords. Depending on whether you're doing wallet-out (see Chapter 1) or lead generation marketing, you'll begin advertising on either the Search or Display networks. And don't sweat this part because you can change any of these campaign-level settings whenever you want.

3. Name your campaign.

   Although using a simple name like Campaign #1 might seem perfectly useful right now, this is a good time to develop some naming conventions that can save you time and avoid confusion later. Start with the theme of the campaign ...