Adwords vs. AdSense: What’s the Difference?

Digital advertising is an excellent way to generate traffic and brand awareness. Google is the main protagonist behind the success of digital advertising surpassing the traditional counterpart. Google is the biggest digital advertising platform, Google has fair share of 37.2% US digital ad spending alone.

But you must be wondering, how you can use its advertising platform for your own benefit. In this article, we specially discuss about the major difference between the Adwords and AdSense and how can you use them in your favour.

What is Google Adwords?

Two prominent type of Google Adwords

Search Adwords

Display Adwords

These are the image ads that run on the Google Display network (GDN) and they display on the Google partners website like Gmail, YouTube. They attract the target audience who visits the website often.

What is Google AdSense?

Google AdSense was launched by Google.com on 18 June 2003. It was originally named as ‘Content Targeting Advertising’. It was said to be founded by Paul Buchheit, who was also the founder of Gmail.

Google AdSense is Google-run program through which website publishers in the Google network of content sites that serves texts, videos, interactive media advertisements that are targeted towards the site content and audience. Administration, sorting and maintenance of these advertisement is solely managed by Google.

In Simple words, Google AdSense is free-of-charge platform that allows the content creators to display the Ads with their online content and can earn money through it. With the help of Google AdSense, a creator can show relevant and engaging advertisement to their site visitors and even customise the advertisement to match with the theme of the website.

Adwords vs AdSense

The main difference between the Google Adwords and Google AdSense is that Adwords attracts advertisers and AdSense attracts publishers. Google Adwords is used by the advertisers to attract traffic to their website while publisher use Google AdSense for monetizing their existing traffic.

Below are the tables that highlighted the core difference between the Google Adwords and AdSense:-

Objective

Platform	Objective
Google Adwords (Search)	Attracts and generate web traffic towards your own website from Google search engine.
Google Adwords (display)	Attracts and generate web traffic towards your own website from Google display network (GDN) of publishing partners, video and mobile Apps.
Google AdSense	Attracts and generate web traffic towards the other websites as a Google display network (GDN) publishing partner.

Policy

Platform	Policy
Google Adwords (Search)	Showing up on the SERP for audience queries who wiling search for your product and services on Google.
Google Adwords (display)	A visual and eye-catching display of your ad shows up on the different website so people can see your product and services easily.
Google AdSense	Renting out ad spaces on your website to the advertisers that your audience find appealing and then monetize that web traffic.

Cost

Platform	Cost
Google Adwords (Search)	You pay free of cost, every time a user click on your ads. The CPC (Cost-per-click) is based on the ad’s bid, Ad rank and the quality score of your ad. More competitive keyword is proportional to higher CPC.
Google Adwords (display)	You can choose suitable pricing goal between these three i.e., CPC (cost-per-click), CPM (Cost-per-thousand impression and CPA (Cost-per-action). CPC is good for generating traffic, CPM is good for website awareness and CPA is fit for more conversions.
Google AdSense	You don’t have to pay any participation fees for Google AdSense. With it you get commission for impression, clicks from the ad interactions of the users on your website. For earning a good revenue through Google AdSense, these three are the most important factors behind it i.e., your audience, ad placement and ad quality.

How Google Adwords Works?

Google Adwords are mostly focused on the Keywords. Keywords are words which mostly likely used by the people for searching their products. During Google Adwords search campaign, advertisers create ads with special offers and these special offers often uses keywords to target the relevant audience for the offer.

When someone searches on Google (also called query), Google will analyse if any advertiser bid on the keyword relevant to the search, if yes, then the advertisement appears on the SERP.

Ad Ranks and Quality score are two key factors behind the working of Google Adwords.

# Ad Ranks

can be defined as the term created by Google which it used to determine the position of your ad in the SERP. Your ad placement depends on your Ad Rank. More the value, more will be the audience engagement. Ad Rank determined by the max. Bid multiplied by your Quality Score.

Factors on which Ad Rank depends:-

• Higher bidding amount, higher ranking
• Your Quality score
• Matching Contextual information
• Higher CTR (click-through-rate), higher impact
• Effective Ad-extension

According to Google,

#Quality score

determines the quality of the Adwords by measuring your CTR, relevance of Keywords, quality of landing page, past performance on SERP. A Quality score rank your advertisement on the scale of 1-10 on the basis of each Adwords or keyword performance.

Key factors of Quality score are as follow:-

• More than expected CTR (click-through-rate), better quality score.
• The relevance of your Adwords and keywords to the search query.
• Good landing page experience increases your Quality score.

Benefits for high Quality score:-

• Its lowers the cost-per-clicks and help in improving the ROI (return of investment).
• You have a higher exposure on Google, your Ads will display more often and have a better SERP position, and more clicks more conversions without raising bids.

How to use Google Adwords?

Below are the following steps you need to follow to use Google Adwords:-

• First visit the home page of Google Adwords website https://ads.google.com/
• Set up your Google Adwords Account.
• After sign in you have to enter your business and website’s name.
• Set your advertising Goal among these options i.e.,
  • Get more calls
  • get more website sales or sign-ups
  • get more visits to your physical location
  • get more views and engagement on YouTube

• Get more calls
• get more website sales or sign-ups
• get more visits to your physical location
• get more views and engagement on YouTube
• Link your Google Adwords account to your Google analytic account which will make tracking, analysing, and reporting between channels and make campaigns much easier.
• Add UTM codes by which Google can easily track any activity associated with specific link.
• Set up conversion tracking which will exactly tell you how many costumers or leads you have acquire through your ad campaign.
• Integrating your Adwords with CRM allows to the track which Adwords working for your audience so you can easily continue to market the offers which are relevant to your customers.

How Google AdSense works?

It is quite simple to understand the working of Google AdSense.

• Step 1: Create your Google AdSense account.
• Step 2: Add small amount AdSense Code to your Website.
• Step 3: Set up your bank account and payment information for collecting the Ad revenue from the Ad spaces.
• Step 4: Add an Ad slot or popups and interstitials within the webpage of your website, this will start generating revenue for your website as the users visits the

Pages of your site

**A flowchart to understand more about Google AdSense Working.

For more info click here

How to create a Google AdSense Account?

There are only 3 simple steps you need to create your Google AdSense account.

1. Check for all the basic requirements, these includes:-
2. Minimum 18 years old.
3. Have a live website that follows Google terms and conditions
4. Active Gmail account
5. Ample amount of website traffic
6. Atleast 3 month old website
7. Have relevant and updated content on the website

• Filling the online application form
• Visit the official Google AdSense website and click on the get started button  https://www.google.com/adsense/start/
• Sign in with Google account or create new if haven’t any
• Click on sign up for your Google AdSense account
• Add URL of your website
• Add AdSense code to your website
• Select your country for payment requirement
• Click and accept the Google AdSense terms and conditions

• Linking your AdSense account to your website, YouTube channel or blog page.

Conclusion

With this article, we get to know about the main differences between the Google Adwords and Google AdSense. That concludes, Adwords is used for businesses while AdSense is used for website publishers. Websites’ owner earn through AdSense while Businesses pay Adwords. I hope, now you will get pretty familiar with the Google advertising platforms and use them accordingly for your own benefits.