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Step 1. Planning: determine how to structure your Smart Display campaigns

Here are guidelines for structuring your Smart Display campaigns:

• Create separate campaigns when you need to have separate budgets for each
• Create separate ad groups within Smart Display campaigns for different product lines or services
• Create separate Responsive Display ads within your ad groups to group assets that work well with each other

Step 2. Planning: determine what a conversion is worth

Bid based on the amount you're willing to pay for each conversion. So if you're focused on generating leads, set a CPA bid that reflects the value new leads bring to your business. If you're focused on generating sales, set a CPA bid that reflects the value each new order brings to your business. The rule of thumb:

1. Determine how much a conversion is worth.
2. Based on your value-per-conversion, determine how much you’re willing to pay to get that conversion in the first place.

Example: If you’re selling shoes at $50 for each pair, and you expect 1 out of 10 people to buy a pair of shoes, you may want to set your CPA target to $5.

If you're collecting leads for your spa services, and each lead, on average, results in a $5 profit, you may choose to set a CPA bid of $1.00 for each lead submitted.

The numbers above will vary based on your business—experiment with bids around the amount you want to pay and adjust them over time based on what works best for you.

Learn more about how to pay for conversions.

Step 3. Set up your campaign

1. Sign in to your Google Ads account.
2. Click your Campaigns tab.
3. Click +Campaign and select Display Network Only.
4. Name your campaign.
5. Under marketing objectives, pick one of the first four objectives under “Drive Action.”
6. Scroll down and check Smart display campaign.
7. Pick your geographic and language targeting for this campaign.
8. Enter your daily budget and CPA bid.
9. Click Save and Continue.

Step 4. Enter your assets

Enter several assets per category—that is, at least 3 headlines, 3 descriptions, 3 logos, and 3 images. Enter one landing page. Important: your assets must be fully interchangeable within each given Smart Display ad. Any headline, for example, could be paired with any description. Here are the guidelines for each type of asset:

• Headlines: Your headlines are the first line of your ad. Headlines can be up to 25 characters. Write headlines that make sense combined with any of your descriptions, images, and landing page.
• Description: Your descriptions add to your headline and invite people to take action. They can be up to 70 characters. Write descriptions that make sense combined with any of your headlines, images, and landing page.
• Logos: Upload 1:1 square logos. The recommended dimensions are 1200 × 1200, but logos can be as small as 128 × 128. In addition, if applicable, upload a landscape logo with an aspect ratio of 4:1. The recommended dimensions for a landscape logo are 512 × 128. A transparent background is best, as long as the logo is centered. Upload logos that combine well with any of your headlines, descriptions, and images. The maximum file size is 1MB, and most common non-.gif formats are accepted.
• Images: To get the greatest reach, upload multiple 1.91:1 landscape images. The recommended dimensions are 1200 x 627 and 1200 × 1200, but images can be as small as 600 × 314 and 600 × 600.  Upload images that work well with your logo and make sense combined with any of your headlines, any of your descriptions, and your landing page. The maximum file size is 1MB, and most common non-.gif formats are accepted.

If you'd like to generate a second set of asset pairings, you can create a new ad later on. The assets you provide in each ad are used interchangeably only within that ad.

Step 5. Let the system optimize for conversions

Smart Display campaigns can take some time to scale and stabilize depending on how many conversions you’re getting (a higher conversion volume typically yields faster optimization). Let the system learn which assets and strategies work best. This can take about 2 weeks, if your campaign has a few conversions a day—a good rule of thumb is to wait for about 40–50 conversions unless you’re not achieving any at all. In that case, consider raising your target CPA bid until conversions start coming in.

Step 6. Check your performance with the asset report

Click View asset details in your “Ads” tab to see a report about how each of your assets are performing. Assets are ranked relative to each other as "best," "good," and "low,” based on how well they've generated conversions. A status of "waiting" means that your asset has not yet been reviewed and approved, and a status of "learning" means the system is still gathering data.

Step 7. Use your asset report to make small, incremental changes

After you check your asset report for a new campaign, you may choose to remove “low” assets and replace them with assets more like your “best” performing ones. After those assets generate enough performance data to be ranked, which can take up to 2 weeks, you may choose to again remove “low” performing assets.

Keep in mind that assets are ranked relative to each other. As you make small changes, don’t be surprised if assets that used to be ranked as “good” now rank as “low”—even if their absolute performance hasn’t changed.

Important: to avoid volatility and enhance optimization, don’t make big, sweeping changes to your campaign.