Search Network with Display Select – Does It Work?

If you already have separate Google Display Network campaigns which are working well for you, you can ignore this blog post.

Google say

Upgrading existing search campaigns to Search Network with Display Select is easy. In a few steps and without extra work, you could gain 15% more customers* by showing your ads at the right moments across search and the web.

Do they exaggerate? Let’s find out by looking at some lead generation campaigns…

We could do with more clicks and conversions to be sure, but looking at a group of closely related CPA campaigns that have been working well on the Search Network so far:

So far, I make this only 7.8 % extra (last click) conversions. Though to be fair, Google did say “you *could* gain 15% more customers*”.

*The quality of the conversions (leads) will almost certainly not be as good as from the Search Network though this will vary depending on what sort of leads you are generating I am sure.

*With CPA campaigns you are not currently able to adjust bids by network (or location or device – or anything else for that matter though this may change in the future). But in theory you should be able to use ROAS bidding to take account of the fact that average order sizes / ROAS may be different from different networks.

*It is a bit of a nuisance to have to segment everything all the time to see how things are actually performing.

If anyone else has any actual data they would like to share I would love to hear about it!