Google Ads is the name of Google’s pay-per-click (PPC) platform, which allows businesses to gain visibility across Google’s properties. The most common type of Google Ads ad is the search ad, which appears on the search engine results page (SERP) for searches relevant to the advertiser’s products and services.

You can also run display campaigns which appear on the Google Display Network—an extensive collection of outside, third-party websites that have agreed to serve Google ads. Google Display ads can be in text, image, video, or rich media format, and can be targeted differently—such as through audiences and remarketing.

Google Ads is focused around keywords, the words that people are most likely to use when searching for their product. When advertisers create a Google Ads search campaign, they create ad with a specific offer and choose a list of keywords to target that are relevant to the offer. When someone searches on Google (also known as a query), Google will check to see if any advertisers are bidding on keywords relevant to that search. If there are, ads will appear on that SERP.