Which Google Ad Type Should You Use? A Guide for Franchise Brands

The right Google ad type depends on what you want customers to do. Search is the strongest starting point when the goal is reaching people actively looking for your service. Display works better for building awareness with visual ads. Performance Max is worth considering when you want to reach customers across multiple Google channels at once and are comfortable giving up some control in exchange for broader reach.

Search: reaching people who are already looking

Search ads appear when someone types a query into Google, which means the customer has already told you what they want. That's a different starting point than most advertising, where you're interrupting someone to introduce an idea. A person searching "gyms near me" or "personal training in [city]" is already interested, and a search ad's job is to be the answer.

That intent can translate into meaningful results. In 2026, the average search-ad conversion rate reached 8.18%, highlighting the potential of Search ads to turn interest into action. For most franchise brands, that makes Search the most natural place to begin, especially when the goal is generating leads, inquiries, or visits to a specific location. In addition, the quality of the keywords you target largely determines whether the right people see your ad. We covered how to think about that in How to Choose the Right Keywords for Your Google Search Ads.

Display: building awareness, not capturing demand

Display ads work very differently. They use visual creative, images and graphics, to reach people as they browse websites and apps across Google's network. You know those banner ads that follow you from site to site, displaying pictures of that sweater you considered buying? Those are Google Display Ads. And their network includes more than 2 million websites, videos, and apps, reaching over 90% of internet users worldwide. For franchise brands, that creates an opportunity to introduce their business to new audiences and stay visible beyond Google Search.

That makes it a good fit for specific situations. For example, promoting a grand opening, reminding past customers a business exists, or putting an event or offer in front of a wider local audience. The tradeoff worth keeping in mind is that reaching more people doesn't automatically mean generating more leads. Display can expand awareness meaningfully, but it's a different job than Search.

Performance Max: broader reach, less direct control

Performance Max takes a different approach again. It uses Google's automation to find customers across multiple channels at once, including Search, YouTube, and Display, based on your goals, creative, and audience signals. It's an appealing option for brands that want to expand beyond Search alone without managing each channel separately.

The tradeoff is control. Google's automation decides where individual ads appear and how budget gets distributed across channels. As a result, you have less direct visibility and say than you would with a Search-only campaign. For some franchises that's a worthwhile exchange for reach. For others, particularly brands still learning what drives results in each market, the clearer feedback of a more focused campaign type is worth more than automation.

Matching the type to the goal

It helps to start from the goal rather than the ad type itself: 

• If the aim is generating leads from people searching for your service, Search is the most direct answer. 
• If it's building awareness with visual creative, Display fits better. 
• If it's reaching customers across several Google channels without managing each one, Performance Max is worth testing.

Why this matters across a network

Choosing an ad type isn't a one-time decision for a franchise, it's a decision that gets replicated across every location running the campaign. A mismatch between campaign type and goal that would cost a single business a modest amount of budget can quietly cost a network far more, since the same choice is being made again and again at scale.

That's part of why campaign structure and campaign type are worth thinking about together. The same system that lets a franchise build one campaign and run it across every location also means the decision about what kind of campaign to build deserves thought upfront. We covered the setup side of that in How Do I Run Google Ads for a Multi-Location Business Without Setting Up Every Location Manually? Flamel's Google Ads solution is built around running these campaign types across a whole network from one place.

FAQ

Which Google ad type is best for a new franchise location? Search is usually the strongest starting point, since it reaches people actively looking for a service nearby. Display can complement it around a grand opening or event, and Performance Max is typically better to explore once there's more campaign data to work with.

Can a franchise run more than one Google ad type at once? Yes. Brands can start with Search and add Display or Performance Max as their goals and budget evolve, using each type for the job it does best rather than expecting one to do everything.

If you want to talk through which campaign type fits your network's goals, you can schedule a demo to walk through it directly.