What is Ad Strength?

Ad strength serves as a real-time indicator during the creation and optimization of RSAs. 

It provides a rating system ranging from 'Poor' to 'Excellent', accompanied by specific action items in areas like diversity, quality, headlines, descriptions, and keyword relevance.

Ad strength is a useful, though not essential tool to measure the effectiveness of your RSAs.  

It evaluates the relevance, quality and the diversity of the ad. 

Does Ad Strength Matter? Is it Worth Optimising for?

Google’s own advice states that by enhancing ad strength from 'Poor' to 'Excellent' advertisers can increase clicks and conversions by 9% on average. 

This is unsurprising, given that ad strength is a measure of how relevant the ad copy is to the target keyword. 

For an ad to be labelled poor it may only have a few headlines, and lack creative variety. So this data is unsurprising. 

But is it worth optimising for? Not over conversions per impression (CPI), or conversion value per impression. 

Just because an ad is labelled as poor, or average, this doesn’t mean it's a bad ad. 

So take ad strength as a guide, but not a definitive answer to whether your ad is performing well. 

It doesn’t matter if an ad is labelled poor if it’s also performing within your targets. Focus on A/B testing your ad copy rather than purely looking at ad strength. 

How to Improve Ad Strength?

Despite ad strength not being 100% essential. It’s still useful as a proxy for good performance. 

Here’s how to improve ad strength:

• Use unique headlines: Avoid using repetitive words or phrases. Pin essential phrases to specific headline or description positions only if you need to. This is your chance to get creative. Check out our guide on ad copy for Google ads. Make sure you’ve got a blend of product/service features, benefits, calls to action, and any promotional copy. 

• Incorporate more keywords: Ensure that the headlines are detailed and contain the highest volume keywords from your ad groups. Don’t worry about variations and low volume keywords.  

• Use unique and diverse descriptions: Keep descriptions unique and aligned with the keywords.  Ensure you have a balance of different types of descriptions and consider that 2 will be placed alongside each other. 

• Use All Headlines: Utilise all 15 headline options. This ensures you’ve got the maximum possible number of combinations. 

• Be cautious with pinning: Pinning will limit headline combination possibilities. I try to avoid pinning altogether, unless the client has specific requirements (i.e a regulated service). 

Frequently Asked Questions

How often does Ad Strength refresh?

• Ad Strength refreshes each time you edit a RSA.

Why is Ad Strength different across ad groups?

• Ad Strength varies due to different keywords as the strength is relative to them. 

Does Ad Strength impact Quality Score?

• Ad Strength has no direct impact on Quality Score. However it serves as a good proxy for a high performing RSA and is a useful tool, so shouldn’t be ignored.