Google Skillshop: Google Ads Training and Certifications
Google's own free training for Google Ads, organized into learning paths and certification exams for Search, Display, Video, Shopping and Measurement. Covers campaign setup, keyword matching, bidding and conversion tracking as the product actually works.
More resources on Paid Ads (Google & Meta Ads)
Perpetual Traffic
Podcast from the performance marketing agency Tier 11 on paid acquisition through Meta and Google Ads. Episodes cover campaign structure, creative testing, budget scaling and multi-channel attribution, helping advertisers diagnose underperforming campaigns and tie ad spend to measurable revenue.
Consumer Heterogeneity and Paid Search Effectiveness: A Large Scale Field Experiment
eBay ran large-scale randomized experiments switching off paid search ads across matched markets. Returns to branded keyword advertising were near zero because those clicks cannibalized free organic traffic, and non-experimental estimates overstated effectiveness by a wide margin. The single most consequential empirical result in paid search, and the reason it survives despite the pre-2022 caution: this is not a tactical guide tied to a UI, it is a causal finding about the economics of search advertising that has not been overturned.
A Comparison of Approaches to Advertising Measurement: Evidence from Big Field Experiments at Facebook
Compares standard attribution methods against randomized controlled trials using 12 Facebook lift studies covering 435 million user-study observations. Observational approaches, including matching on thousands of behavioral variables, frequently failed to recover experimental results, often overstating advertising effects substantially.
Google Ads for Beginners
Two-hour hands-on guided project that walks through building a first Google Search Ads campaign. Covers account setup, campaign and ad group structure, keyword research, audience targeting, bids and budgets, conversion tracking and ad writing, so learners can launch and optimise a basic search campaign.