Campaign types: Search, Display, Shopping, Video, and Performance Max
Part 2 built a Search campaign specifically — one of several genuinely different campaign types, each suited to a different goal and behaving very differently in practice. Picking the right one matters more than almost any other early decision.
Search: intent-driven, text-based
Ads appear directly in search results, matched to what someone actively typed. This is the highest-intent format — someone searching "coffee subscription" is already looking for exactly that — and it's what Bright Leaf Coffee's part 2 campaign uses. Best suited to a business with a clear, describable product or service people actively search for by name or need.
Display: visual, broad-reach, lower intent
Image and banner ads shown across millions of partner websites and apps in Google's Display Network, targeted by topic, audience, or remarketing (part 14) rather than active search intent. Someone seeing a Display ad wasn't necessarily looking for anything related at that moment — this is a brand-awareness and remarketing tool, not typically a direct-response format on its own. Bright Leaf Coffee might use Display specifically to remarket to someone who visited the site and didn't purchase, not as a cold-audience acquisition channel.
Shopping: product listings with images and price, upfront
[Product image] Bright Leaf Coffee — Ethiopian Light Roast — $18.00 — brightleafcoffee.comShopping ads pull directly from a product feed (part 15 covers building one) — image, price, and store name shown before a click, which pre-qualifies traffic since a searcher already saw the price before clicking through. For an e-commerce business like Bright Leaf Coffee, Shopping campaigns very often outperform Search campaigns for the same products, precisely because of that upfront qualification.
Video: YouTube and video partner placements
Ads shown before, during, or alongside YouTube content — genuinely different creative requirements (an actual video asset, not just text or a product image) and a different measurement model. Better suited to broader brand-awareness goals than direct response for most businesses starting out; this series covers it only briefly, since it's a meaningfully different skill set from the text- and Shopping-based campaigns most of this series focuses on.
Performance Max: one campaign, every network at once
Introduced as Google's newer, more automated campaign type — a single campaign spanning Search, Display, Shopping, YouTube, and more simultaneously, with Google's own machine learning handling most targeting and placement decisions. Part 16 covers this in full, including a direct, honest look at the real tradeoff: less granular control in exchange for automated cross-network optimization.
Matching campaign type to actual goal
Bright Leaf Coffee — subscription sales → Search + Shopping
Bright Leaf Coffee — re-engaging cart abandons → Display (remarketing)
GreenDesk — B2B demo requests → Search (part 17)
GreenDesk — broader awareness in its category → Display or VideoThe recurring mistake this table is meant to prevent: defaulting to whichever campaign type the account setup flow suggests first, rather than matching the type to the actual goal. A B2B SaaS company like GreenDesk running Shopping campaigns makes no sense — it has no physical product feed; an e-commerce business skipping Shopping campaigns in favor of Search-only leaves a genuinely high-performing format unused.
Running one Performance Max campaign as the only campaign in an account, assuming its automation covers everything a more deliberate structure would. Part 16 covers this directly: Performance Max is a powerful addition to a well-structured account, not a full replacement for the control a dedicated Search or Shopping campaign still offers.
Next: keyword research specifically for paid search — a genuinely different exercise from the organic keyword research covered in this site's SEO series.