Add New Ad

To create a new ad, click on the "Add New Ad" link in the "Tools" section.

When you create a new ad, you have to populate various text fields.

• Headline

  The headline is the first line of your ad, and will be the link most users click to go to your site. It should be closely related to the keywords in your ad group to help improve your quality score and achieve higher clicks.

  The character limit for Yahoo! Search Marketing headlines is 40 characters; the limit for Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter headlines is 25 characters.

• Description Lines

  The description lines give more information about the product and services you offer.

  For Google AdWords ads you can enter two description lines of 35 characters each. In general, the first line conveys more specific information about your offerings, and the second line, often referred to as the "Call to Action" line, tells the customer what to do (i.e., "buy …", "sign-up for …", "order now"). For Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter ads you can enter a single description line of up to 70 characters.

• Display URL

  This is the URL that will appear at the bottom of your ad. The root of the URL needs to be the same as the landing page’s root, but the second part of the URL may be different. Display URLs can be up to 35 characters on all networks.

• Destination URL

  The destination URL is the actual URL that customers will be taken to if they click on your ad. As a best practice, the landing page customers arrive at should be a page that closely matches their search and your ad, rather than a homepage or a generic landing page.  The destination URL will be auto-populated from the display URL, but can be modified.  It can be longer than the display URL but the root of the two URLs should be the same, otherwise the ad networks may perceive your ad as lower quality.

To start the ad over, click the "Clear / Reset Ad" link at the bottom left.

The next section of the wizard generates a list of suggested keywords based on destination URLs for ads in your ad group as well as other factors. To select items from the list of suggestions, simply click on the suggested keyword in the box on the left, and click the "Select" link to add it. To add all the suggested keywords, click "Select All". If you added a keyword by mistake or decided later to remove it, click on the keyword you would like to remove in the box on the right and then click "Remove". To start over, click "Remove All".

You can also enter a keyword or URL and click 'Suggest' to add keywords based on that keyword or URL to the suggested list below.

Generate Multiple Ads

This wizard is similar to the basic wizard for adding new ads, but it allows you to test up to eight variations of an ad without having to create each ad individually. Simply enter one or two headlines, and up to two variations for each description field (as well as your display and destination URLs) and the tool will generate as many as eight variations on your ad, using the fields you have entered. After testing each of these for a period of time, you can allocate the most resources to the best performing ad.

To view competitive ads, choose one of your ad group's keywords from the drop-down menu on the upper-right and the wizard will display top-performing ads for those keywords.