The very first decision when you open a Google Ads account is which campaign type to build (Search, Display, Video, Shopping, App or Performance Max), and getting it wrong is how a budget quietly drains into the wrong place. Here is the answer in one line. A campaign type decides what your ad looks like, where it appears, and the mindset of the person who sees it, so which one you pick depends on what the customer you want is actually doing at that moment. A Vancouver restaurant's diners are typing "Kitsilano brunch" into Google looking for somewhere to eat; that is Search (with local intent layered on). An e-commerce shop selling candles wants buyers to see the product and the price first; that is Shopping. Choosing this layer correctly is the first step to a small budget not being wasted, and the basis on which you and whoever runs your ads can actually talk.
Who is this article for? ❓
If you run a business in Vancouver, are about to start with Google Ads, and feel a little lost in front of that row of "campaign types" in the dashboard, this is worth a few minutes. It won't walk you through opening an account or which button to click. It helps you form a judgement, "for my business, which campaign should I build first?", so your money lands in the right place and you can follow what the person running your ads is saying. If you sell physical goods purely online, or close most of your business over the phone, the relevant sections below will be especially worth reading.
First, get clear on which layer this is
Google Ads is built in nested layers. The outermost is the campaign, the "campaign type" this article is about; inside it sit ad groups, the actual ad copy, targeting (who sees it) and bidding (how much you pay). This article focuses only on that outermost layer, which is most like "choosing your medium": television, the newspaper classifieds, or a leaflet through the letterbox. Get this layer right and the inner ones start to make sense. One common mix-up to clear up first: a campaign type is about which channel your ad runs on and in what form, which is a different thing from who you show the ad to (targeting). Chasing back people who have already visited your site, for instance, is remarketing, a targeting method rather than a campaign type.
The main campaign types, and the customer each one meets
These are the campaign types a Vancouver small business typically chooses between. Hold on to one intuition: different types are like different media. The real difference is what the person on the other side is doing, and what kind of ad they end up seeing.
Search: the customer comes looking for you, like the newspaper classifieds
Search ads are text ads that appear in Google's search results. What makes them special: the customer is actively searching, with their need out in the open. Someone typing "Kitsilano brunch near me" on their phone sees a text link at the very top marked "Sponsored", a headline, a line of description and your web address, and tapping it goes straight to your site or menu. That is why for restaurants, lawyers, physiotherapists and other "customers only search when they have a need" businesses, the first thing to build is usually a Search campaign, and one of the types it pays most to get right so you don't waste money on it.
Display: getting your face seen on sites people browse, like a leaflet through the door
Display ads are images or banners spread across the Google Display Network (millions of websites and apps). They are the opposite of Search: the customer is not looking for you. They're reading the news, a recipe or some article, and your banner appears in a corner of the page, introducing you to a relevant new audience. For that browser, the experience is "I'm reading along, and an image of your shop appears beside it." Display excels at making people who didn't know you grow familiar with you and at widening reach. That is its job as a channel, and it is not the same thing as remarketing, which chases back people who have already visited.
Video: telling a story on YouTube, like a TV commercial
Video ads appear mainly on YouTube. For the viewer, it's the clip that plays before or during a video. Some can be skipped after a few seconds; some are six-second bumpers you watch through. They suit businesses that need to "show the result, make it clear", such as a wedding photographer running a short showreel or a renovation firm showing a before-and-after. That is far more persuasive than a line of text.
Shopping: putting the product photo and price right on the results page
Shopping ads are a retailer-only format that shows a product card directly in the search results: a product photo, the price, your shop name. For the searcher, before clicking through to any site they can already see "this is what it looks like and what it costs", so the people who do click through tend to be closer to buying. A Vancouver shop selling handmade candles can have a card with photo and price appear when someone searches "soy candle Vancouver". That is exactly the type an online retailer should consider first.
App: built to drive app downloads and use
If your business centres on a mobile app, App campaigns use machine learning to place your ad automatically across Search, Google Play, YouTube and the Display Network, aimed squarely at getting people to install and then use the app. For that person, while they're on YouTube, searching, or browsing Google Play, what they see is an ad with an "Install" button that taps straight through to the download page. A local food-delivery app pushing for downloads runs exactly this.
Performance Max: one campaign that fills almost every channel automatically
Performance Max is Google's newer, AI-driven campaign type. You give it assets and a goal, and it serves your ad automatically across almost all of Google's channels (Search, Display, YouTube, Gmail, Maps and more), optimising towards bringing in sales or leads. It can target local goals such as store visits too. It suits the short-handed shop with no time to manage several ad types separately. The trade-off is that you hand over some manual control, so it is more a case of trusting the system to run for you, which means getting conversion tracking and your goal set correctly up front.
(Google also offers newer types such as Demand Gen, built to spark interest and grow demand across YouTube, Discover and Gmail; for a business just starting out, thinking through the choices above is usually enough.)
Where this sits in your business
Choosing a campaign type is the front end of marketing and customer acquisition. It decides how and on which channel you meet your customers. It works hand in hand with your website: the ad brings the right people across in the right format, and the website catches them and makes them willing to get in touch or buy. So choosing a campaign type is, at heart, asking "where is my customer right now, and what are they doing?"
What happens if you pick the wrong one
A common failure is building the budget on a mismatched campaign. Customers who arrive by actively searching (where Search fits) get met instead with a blast of Display ads chasing "impressions": money spent, but the people who come have little intent to buy. Or an online shop skips Shopping and leans on text ads alone, throwing away the high-intent clicks a photo-and-price card would bring. Pick the type wrong and no amount of careful targeting or bidding underneath can rescue it. This is the real reason many people conclude "Google Ads doesn't work." The tool is fine; the very first layer simply didn't match.
When it's worth choosing one in earnest
A few common moments. You've just opened and urgently need a first wave of customers, so work out first whether they "come by searching" or "come by seeing". You're already running ads but results are erratic and you suspect the wrong type. You've launched a new e-commerce site or an app and need the matching Shopping or App campaign. Or you're genuinely short-handed and want a single Performance Max campaign to handle every channel at once. Hit any one of these and it's worth working through "which campaign type should I use" properly.
Leave this to 5U Website
Choosing a campaign type looks like nothing more than a dropdown in the dashboard, but it sets the direction of the whole account. Pick wrong and the more you spend the more you lose. Here is our honest view after years of doing this for Vancouver businesses: most local service shops, the restaurants, clinics, trades and the like, are best served by starting with Search alone, where the customer already has the need. We'd usually hold off on Display, Video and Performance Max until there is a real reason for them, conversion tracking that actually works, budget to spare, or a specific job to do such as a product catalogue to sell or an app to push. Spreading a small budget across every type from day one is the mistake we see most often. So what we do for clients is work out which channel your customers actually appear on and in what mindset, pick the campaign type to match, weight the budget towards the people most likely to convert, and keep adjusting against the data. If you're about to start advertising, or your current account has never shown results, take a look at our website design and digital marketing services, or send us an email describing your situation. We usually reply within one to two business days.
To dig deeper into this layer, read on: what Google Ads is and what it brings (an overview), telling the ad formats apart by what they look like, the thinking behind who you show ads to (targeting), and how much you bid.
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