Advertising copy

What advertising copy is

Advertising copy is the short text of a paid ad: the headline, the description, and the line under the image, written to earn a click from someone you are paying to reach. It is written in sets rather than singly, because every ad platform runs several versions and keeps the ones that work, and it is written together with the page it leads to, because a click that lands on the wrong promise is money spent to lose a customer.

It is not campaign copy, which is the one idea carried across ads, page, email and social for a fixed period; ad copy is one part of that. It is also not media buying. I write the ads and the test plan; I do not run the account or spend the budget, and the copywriting hub says so plainly.

Who this is for

A business that is already spending on ads, or about to, and can see the cost more clearly than the return. The usual case: the ads were written in ten minutes when the account was set up, every ad in the account says roughly the same thing, and nobody has looked at the words since. The second case is a new campaign, where the ads and the landing page are being written at the same time and can be made to match from the start.

This is not for a business with no page for the ad to land on. An ad pointing at the home page pays for a visitor who then has to find the offer themselves. Write the landing page first, or at the same time. It is also not for a business that has never worked out what it is offering; offer copy comes before any ad.

What goes in it

Three things go into every set of ads I write, and I will ask for all three on the first call.

The phrases or the audience. For search ads, the list of search phrases grouped by intent, so that each ad group answers one kind of question. If that grouping does not exist yet, keyword research produces it. For display and social ads, a plain description of who will see the ad and what they were doing when it appeared, because someone reading the news is not in the same frame of mind as someone searching for a plumber.

The page. I read the landing page before writing a word. The ad's headline and the page's headline have to make the same promise in the same words. When they do not, the visitor assumes they have arrived in the wrong place and leaves within seconds, and the platform charges you for the click regardless.

The offer and the proof. What the reader gets, what it costs if you are willing to say, and the one piece of evidence that fits in a headline: a number of years, a number of jobs, a named guarantee.

What you get

The ad sets. One spreadsheet, one row per ad, grouped by ad group or by audience. For search ads, that is a set of headlines and descriptions per ad group, written to the platform's character limits, with the phrases each headline is meant to match. For display and social, three to five variants per audience, each with the headline, the body line, the button label and a note on what the image should show.

Landing page notes. One page per landing page listing what must change on it for the ads to match: usually the headline, the first sentence and the button. If the changes are more than that, I will tell you it needs conversion copy and quote it separately.

A test plan. Which variants to run against which, how long to let each run before judging, and what to keep and what to cut. Written for whoever runs the account, whether that is you, an agency or a platform's own automation.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A furnace and heat pump installer runs search ads on one campaign with one ad group and three ads, all of which say "Heating and cooling experts, call today". The search phrases in the account range from "furnace not turning on" to "heat pump rebate" to "new furnace cost". Every one of those searchers sees the same ad and lands on the home page.

The rewrite splits the phrases into four ad groups: repair, replacement, heat pumps, and rebates. Each gets five headlines and three descriptions that answer that group's question, so the person whose furnace stopped at midnight sees "Same-day furnace repair" and the person pricing a replacement sees a price range. Each group points at its own page, and the landing page notes say what each page's headline must read. The test plan says: run all five headlines for three weeks, keep the two that earn the most calls per group, then write two challengers. Four ad groups, twenty headlines, four pages, one spreadsheet.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. What you are advertising, where it runs, what the ads say now, and what a click is worth to you. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. The number of ad groups or audiences, the number of variants each, and the pages in scope, agreed before anything starts.
3. Access and reading. Read-only access to the ad account if there is one, the phrase list or audience description, and the landing pages. Two working days.
4. The draft sets. Delivered five to seven working days after the call, with the landing page notes. You tell me what you cannot say, what you will not offer, and what a competitor already says.
5. The final sets and the test plan. One round of revisions included, then a short call with whoever runs the account.

One to two weeks from first call to final copy is typical for a single campaign.

What it costs

Advertising copy is quoted as a fixed price in CAD after the half-hour call. The price depends on how many ad groups or audiences there are, how many variants each needs, and how many landing pages I have to read and annotate. It never includes ad spend, which stays entirely yours. The pricing page explains how quoting works for services without a published band.

What happens next

After the first test, the usual next job is the page rather than the ad: the clicks arrive and the page does not convert them, and that is conversion copy. If the ads are the start of something larger, the same idea carried into email and social is campaign copy. And if what the ads reveal is that nobody is searching for what you thought they were searching for, keyword research is where the next campaign starts.