The Most Practical Google Ads Course - 2026

In this chapter, we dive into the essential steps for setting up your Google Ads account.

We will be covering:

• Account setup

• Connecting Youtube and Google Analytics

• Creating fundamental audiences

• Understanding events

• Introduction to Google Ads Editor

This course is designed to help you work smarter, not harder, by building a solid foundation from the very beginning. Let’s dive in.

This video provides a practical, step-by-step walkthrough of creating your Google Ads account, including setting up billing, completing advertiser verification, and submitting business details.

Learn how to connect your YouTube channel to your Google Ads account to utilize video assets and audience data for your campaigns.

This practical guide shows you how to connect your Google Analytics (GA4) account to Google Ads for comprehensive data tracking and performance analysis.

This lesson demonstrates the process of setting up initial audience lists, a crucial step for campaign success, before diving deeper into audience strategies later in the course.

This video explains what events are and how to properly configure them to track valuable user actions and inform your bidding strategies.

You can download google ads editor directly from Google, do not use 3rd party websites.

The editor is an essential tool when you strive for efficiency, quality and working smarter. It allows:

• Make bulk changes

• Lookup and filter elements on campaign / ad group / ad or keyword level

• Edit offline and publish when changes are ready.

• Draft ideas, prepare for future changes

• Work with a team simultaneously

This practical video provides a complete tour and demonstration of the Google Ads Editor interface and its key functions.

Hi there!
You will notice that in the Google interface campaign creation start from identifying your goal, be that traffic, conversion, views or leads.
In this course, we don't follow that logic. Every campaign you create should have an event (goal) in mind. That can be a click to open "contact" page or sending a message. Let's try to avoid traffic campaigns all together, because that's not insightful for you and the algorithm.
Same applies to video view campaigns. Unless you are a youtuber and are not trying to offer any services or products, but only grow awareness of your channel, there's no need to optimise for views. Not in the early stage anyways.

We will be covering:

• Search campaigns

• DSA campaigns

• Demand-gen campaigns

• Pmax campaigns
  

In this video we'll go through all the different campaign types. After watching this video you will have a road map to select the right campaign types for your business.

As we agreed early on - we want to avoid optimising for traffic. Therefore, we want to avoid bidding strategies that aim to maximise it.
Maximise clicks and Maximise impression share bidding strategies are for accounts, that do not track conversion.

Maximise conversion and Maximise conversion value bidding strategies are for accounts, that have conversions in place.

In this chapter we will discuss the differences between them, understand which business models benefit from specific strategies and learn important details about each strategy, and what to expect when switching between them.

In this video I explain how smart bidding strategies work and how they are compatible with different campaign types.

Once you understand the fundamental building blocks of a campaign, it’s time to talk theory — and best practices.

Always have an audience.
There are two types of audience settings: Observational, which signals to Google what kind of users you’d like to target, and Targeting, used primarily for remarketing. Set these up before going live — we’ll do this together later in the course.

Fewer campaigns are better.
Google’s algorithm optimizes at the campaign level — because that’s where bidding strategies live. The more data a campaign has, the better Google can learn and make decisions. This simplified structure might look basic at first, but you can always split campaigns later once you have enough data. Spreading conversions across too many campaigns delays learning, per campaign you want to have:

• Ideal: 15+ conversions in the past 14 days

• Minimum: 15 conversions in 30 days

Fewer ad groups are better.
Historically, advertisers created dozens or hundreds of ad groups to cover every possible keyword variation. That’s no longer necessary. Google’s contextual understanding allows fewer, smarter ad groups.

Here are several ways to group keywords effectively:

• By landing page: All keywords and ads lead to the same destination page.

• By topic or product: e.g., Campaign “Home Decor” → Ad group 1 “Pillows”, Ad group 2 “Carpets”.

• By language: If targeting multilingual audiences, separate ad groups by language (e.g., English vs. German ads for hotel booking). This DOES NOT mean that you need to target only one language at the adgroup or campaign level. It's actually better to target all languages, as Google will soon be removing language targeting all together.

• By match type: If you’re testing or have limited budget, create separate ad groups for each match type (Broad vs. Exact and Phrase). Broad match discovers new queries, while Exact and phrase captures highly relevant terms at lower cost.

This video shows the practical, step-by-step process of setting up your very first Search campaign using the standard Google Ads interface.

Learn the efficient way to create your first Search campaign using the Google Ads Editor.

What we will learn in this chapter:

• Keyword match types

• Long vs Short tale keywords

• Negative keywords and negative keyword list strategy

• How keyword planner works

• How you should adapt your keyword strategy to stay relevant in Google AI Answers

This lesson provides a walkthrough of the Keyword Planner, a built-in tool used to find search volumes, keyword ideas, and trends for your strategy.

This practical video demonstrates how to manually add keywords to your campaign directly through the Google Ads interface.

Learn how to efficiently add and import keywords in bulk using the Google Ads Editor.

This video teaches you how to create negative keyword lists and use exclusions to prevent your ads from showing on irrelevant or non-converting search terms.

There's more to search ads than just writing a bit of copy.
In this chapter we will learn how to make an ad that stands out, utilise all ad assets and extensions and how to optimise your ads for higher click-though-rate.

This video provides a practical guide on how to build and structure a search ad directly within the Google Ads interface.

Learn the efficient way to create, edit, and bulk-manage your search ads using the Google Ads Editor.

This lecture covers ad extensions (or Ad Assets), explaining what they are and why they are essential for boosting your ad's performance and visibility.

This practical video demonstrates how to efficiently add and manage all types of ad assets using the Google Ads Editor.

In this chapter we will learn:

• Which audiences can be used with which campaign types

• How to build audiences

• Different audience types

  
  

This lecture explores the various types of audiences available in Google Ads, including custom, demographic, interest-based, and remarketing lists.

This video provides a practical guide on adding and configuring audiences to a campaign using the Google Ads interface.

Learn the efficient way to add and manage audiences within a campaign using the Google Ads Editor.

This lecture covers the various types of video ads, their role in the sales funnel, and how to select the right format based on your business objective.

Learn the necessary steps for uploading your video creative assets correctly to your YouTube channel so they can be used in your ad campaigns.

Learn the efficient way to set up and manage your video traffic or conversion campaigns using the Google Ads Editor.

Demand Gen campaigns are becoming increasingly powerful. Originally a standalone campaign type, they’ve been merged with Video Action Campaigns (VAC) since March 2025. While still a bit rough around the edges in terms of usability, Demand Gen campaigns focus on driving conversions — not just awareness.

Here’s the catch: because of their more advanced audience setup, Demand Gen campaigns can’t be fully configured in Google Ads Editor. But don’t worry — we’ll go step-by-step through the initial setup in both the Ads interface and the Editor, then dedicate a separate video entirely to mastering those key audience settings.

I genuinely believe this campaign type represents the biggest opportunity for video advertising success.

This video walks through the initial setup process for a Demand Gen campaign using the Google Ads interface.

Learn the process for setting up the core structure of a Demand Gen campaign using the Google Ads Editor.

This video dedicates specific attention to mastering the complex audience configuration process for Demand Gen campaigns, which must be completed in the interface.

Marketers used to cringe at the mere mention of Performance Max (PMax) campaigns. They were a black-box when it came to placements, targeting and performance. And to be honest — some of that mystery remains.

Think of PMax like the saucer beneath a flowerpot. Your search and video campaigns are the pot itself: you control its size (budget), the soil (keywords) and how much water (traffic) it receives. Unless you have a limitless pot (budget), you won’t catch every drop of water.

So even with the best pot, there’s always some spillage. That’s where PMax (the saucer) comes in — catching those valuable bits of traffic you might otherwise miss.

But PMax isn’t just a safety net. It’s a source of insight and opportunity. By analysing the topics where your PMax ads appear, you’ll uncover hidden queries and gaps your search campaigns might be missing.

A lot has changed for Pmax and a lot of change is coming in the upcoming quarters. Google has been pushing this AI campaign type for a long time now, which is only another indication that it will continue to grow.

This theory-based lecture covers essential rules, such as creating brand exclusions and managing data leakage, that you must know before launching or optimizing PMax campaigns.

This video provides a step-by-step guide on creating a Performance Max campaign, noting why this campaign type is best set up directly in the interface.

Learn the steps for using the Google Ads Editor to manage certain aspects of your Performance Max campaign after the initial interface setup.

Dynamic Search Ads (or DSA) campaigns are designed to automatically match your ads to relevant search queries based on the content of your website. They’re especially useful if you manage a large site or offer a wide range of products or services.

They’re also great for driving traffic to blogs, affiliate sites, or tutorial pages — basically, anywhere your content already answers what users are searching for.

Here’s how it works: Google scans your landing pages and dynamically generates ads for users searching for topics related to that content.

For example, if you’ve written an article explaining how to set up a DSA campaign, Google might show your ad linking to that article when someone searches “how do DSA campaigns work” or “how to set up a DSA campaign.”

In DSA campaigns, you don’t use keyword targeting — your landing pages become your targeting. The algorithm takes care of the rest.

Just like Performance Max, DSA campaigns are best used alongside regular Search campaigns, not instead of them. Both offer less manual control, but they’re incredibly efficient — especially if you have a large inventory or a website that changes frequently.

Important note: Since the launch of AI campaign creation flow and AI Max setting, You will not be able to create DSA campaigns in the interface, only in the editor.
As of start of 2026, DSA campaign type is still available, but seeing the push of AI Max from Google, we can surely assume that they will be sunsetted once a certain percentage of Google ads users starts using AI Max.
This is by no means a reason for you to NOT try DSA campaigns. If anything, try it early on, and once the change comes, you will be offered a migration path. It's always better to go through migration once you have a campaign that already has historical conversions.