By Jackie Magnusson

Why do major brands opt into Google Sponsored Promotion (GSP) Ads or GSP Ads in Gmail? The main reason that major brands elect to employ GSP ads is to reach potential leads in an environment that they spend a significant time in outside of search. After all, how many of us check our emails first thing in the morning? Email is such a major part of our modern day lives that the average person spends an average of twenty hours per week in their email inbox, so the real question is – Why not advertise to people in a space where they are already spending a significant portion of their time?

 

What exactly are GSP ads? Google Sponsored Promotion ads are a form of paid advertising in the Google Display Network that appears directly in a Google Mail (Gmail) user’s inbox. A GSP ad appears above the organic emails within the inbox in a similar format to an email subject line, but will be identified as being an ad with the “Ad” icon present to the left of the subject line. When a GSP ad is clicked on, the ad opens up to a large-scale banner that resembles the body of an email.

 

As a GSP ad appears within the email inbox and has a similar look and feel, you may be asking yourself, “What makes a GSP ad different from an email marketing campaign?”. The key difference between a GSP ad and an email marketing campaign is the method of contact. In order to launch an email marketing campaign, you must first have an email list of intended recipients to send the email. With a GSP ad, your ad is served directly into the inbox of an individual who is determined to be in your target audience based on a variety of targeting options:

● Affinity audiences (interested in your business i.e. sporting apparel companies can advertise to consumers interested in fitness and sports)
● Keywords specific to your services
● Customer match to your database
● In-market audiences-consumers researching your products
● Other options include remarketing, life events and demographics

 

 

For example, if you are already subscribed to emails from major department stores, such as Bloomingdales and Saks Fifth Avenue, you may also be a potential lead for a subscription clothing service like Fab Fit Fun. A brand may want to target potential leads by implementing a GSP campaign as they already know the email habits of the people that they are trying to reach though they do not yet have a direct means of contact for these individuals – i.e. an email address.

 

In short, a GSP ad is a great way for a brand to generate leads by getting in front of a new audience who has been targeted specifically based on the emails that they are already receiving.