Attending a new school, adjusting to a new environment and meeting new people, is always challenging for a student. Now imagine being a senior and in quarantine for two weeks at a new school on top of these challenges, and you have the perfect recipe for disaster. But this was my reality, I was, as I mentioned before, a senior and I could not dawdle in feeling bad for myself as I had barely enough time to prepare myself to chase my dreams of studying marketing and communications. 

I had been working on a little project since summer, called the Google Ads Certificate. While I knew that there were many Korean platforms for ad distribution, I thought that as the world continues to globalize, Google is the best choice to display ads for a global audience.

There are many different platforms in the global market, so why Google? In our daily lives, Google is at the center of our internet experience. Students and teachers rely on Google for finding learning materials as well as entertainment. When we want to find a restaurant near us with good reviews, we search on Google to give us recommendations. If we want to compare an item we want to buy with others, voila, we can easily do so. Our increased reliance on Google has drawn many businesses as the platform has increasingly become the hub of information where businesses can advertise their goods and services. When we search for something as simple as online tutoring, the first things that show up are advertisements. To maximize this advertising potential Google has, businesses have begun studying optimal methods of exposure to their potential customers.

Gone are the days of handing out leaflets to passersby. Businesses must be able to analyze the consumer traffic and behavior online and use this information to effectively market their goods and services. From my time spent trying to earn the Google Ads Certificate, I was able to gain a better understanding of how advertisements work and what the cost of advertising effectively is.

The Google Ads Certification is a program that teaches you to use Google’s own search engine to effectively market a good or service.  To be more specific, it gives you knowledge about how to navigate through the advertising feature on Google and hands out certificates to those who have proven to be successful at it. In order to receive this certification, you must be able to score higher than 80% on tests that cover a variety of topics such as Keyword ads, Display ads, and Shopping ads. Each topic has 40 to 50 questions with a time limit of 75 minutes per section. Despite my limited time due to online classes and preparation for the SAT, I decided to go on a little adventure. It was not an easy one, and the hardest part of the process was getting used to the technical vocabulary Google employed in their lessons. But these challenges only fueled my desire to complete the certification process.

I have taken on many challenges before, but this one was especially challenging. As someone who lacks any real experience in the real world, trying to do something that professional advertising agencies usually do was not an easy feat. From my experience, I began to realize how much Google integrated itself as part of our everyday lives, affecting each and every one of us directly. Google has become the model for advertising for many other platforms like Facebook and other social media sites as well. As an aspiring student in the field of marketing and communications, I hope to one day feel the strength of Google up close and personal.

Chanjin Yoon
Grade 12
Bodwell High School