Answer the Public: Ad Ideas for 2026 Campaigns

In 2026, you can’t just guess what customers want by looking at basic keyword lists. You need to practice search listening. A tool like Answer the Public is your direct line into what your audience is actually thinking by showing you the questions, comparisons, and problems they type into Google. This is raw, unfiltered intelligence, and it’s a goldmine for writing ads that actually connect instead of just pushing generic messages. So how do you take these search queries and turn them into ad campaigns that really work?

Setting Up Your Search Listening Query in Answer the Public

Your first step in using Answer the Public to generate ad ideas is getting your search query right. The tool works by taking a core topic and exploding it into a huge web of related searches. You need to be precise. A term that’s too broad will flood you with useless noise, but one that’s too specific might not give you enough creative material to work with.

Choosing Your Core Keyword or Topic

When you land on the Answer the Public homepage, you’ll see a big search bar. This is where you put your main keyword. Think about the product, service, or problem your ad is supposed to address. If you’re marketing a new line of plant-based protein powders, for example, you’d probably start with “plant-based protein” or “vegan protein powder.” Don’t use long-tail phrases here. The tool is built to expand most effectively from simple one- or two-word terms.

For instance, if I were launching an online course on digital marketing, I’d just type “digital marketing course” in the search bar. The tool then does its thing, spitting out a visual map of everything people are asking about that topic. It’s always tempting to put a full question in there, but you get better results by letting Answer the Public do the work of branching out from a general seed keyword.

Selecting Language and Region

Just below the search bar are dropdown menus for “Country” and “Language.” Don’t skip this. It’s an absolutely critical step for making sure your ad ideas are localized. If your ads are targeting customers in the United States, you must select “United States.” Do the same for “English” or whatever language is right for your campaign. This step guarantees the data you get reflects the search habits of your actual audience and stops you from getting weird, irrelevant results from other countries. I’ve personally seen campaigns fail because a marketer forgot to change these settings and ended up with ad copy that was completely nonsensical to their target market.

Pro Tip: If you’re running campaigns for a bilingual audience or in multiple countries, you have to run separate queries for each language and country pair. The small differences in how people phrase questions can be massive, even when the topic is the same. For example, search queries about “personal finance” in the UK will probably bring up ISA accounts, while searches in the US will be all about 401(k)s.

Executing the Search and Understanding the Initial Visualization

Once your term and settings are in, hit the “Search” button. Answer the Public will generate its famous visualization, which is usually a big wheel broken down into categories like “Questions,” “Prepositions,” “Comparisons,” “Alphabetical,” and “Related.” This is your first look inside your user’s head.

The “Questions” part (which breaks down queries by “how,” “what,” “where,” “when,” “why,” “who”) is almost always the most valuable starting point for ad ideas. These are the literal questions people are asking search engines. Look at the density of the branches on the wheel, because thicker lines mean those queries are more common. That visual weight instantly tells you what’s most important to your audience.

Extracting Ad Ideas from “Questions” and “Prepositions”

This is where the real work begins. The core value of Answer the Public for building ad campaigns comes from digging into the explicit needs shown in the “Questions” data and the implicit needs found in the “Prepositions” data.

Analyzing “Questions” for Direct Ad Copy

In the “Questions” visualization, you’ll find gems like “what is plant-based protein good for?”, “how to make vegan protein shakes taste good?”, and “where to buy plant-based protein powder?”. Every single one of these is a potential ad. An ad that has a headline like “Boost Energy & Muscle: The Benefits of Our Plant-Based Protein” is going to perform better than a generic “protein powder” ad because it directly answers the user’s question.

Think about the intent driving each question. “How to” questions show that people are looking for solutions and tutorials, making them perfect for ads that click through to a landing page with a guide or a product demo. “What is” questions show a need for information, so you can use them to create top-of-funnel awareness ads that educate the user. “Where to buy” questions are pure gold, they have high commercial intent and should be met with ads that have strong calls to action and direct links to product pages.

Common Mistake: People often ignore the emotion behind the question. A query like “why is my protein powder clumpy?” isn’t just a technical problem. It’s a frustration. Your ad can speak directly to that feeling: “Tired of Clumpy Protein? Discover Our Smooth-Mix Vegan Formula.”

Using “Prepositions” for Feature-Benefit Messaging

The “Prepositions” section (which includes terms like “for,” “with,” “near,” “without,” “to”) shows you how people connect your main topic to other ideas. This is where you find out about desired features and common deal-breakers. For our “plant-based protein” example, you might find “protein powder for weight loss,” “protein powder with amino acids,” or “protein powder without soy.”

These phrases are basically your feature-benefit statements written for you. If a lot of people are searching for “protein powder for weight loss,” your ad headline should be something like “Achieve Your Weight Goals with Our Plant-Based Protein.” If “without soy” shows up a lot, make sure your ad copy says “Soy-Free & Allergen-Friendly Protein” loud and clear. These aren’t just keywords. They’re value propositions that your audience has already validated for you.

Expected Outcome: When you build these direct questions and prepositional phrases into your ad copy, your ads feel incredibly relevant to what the user is searching for at that exact moment. That relevance almost always leads to higher click-through rates (CTR) and better quality scores on platforms like Google Ads, which means your cost per click (CPC) goes down and your return on ad spend (ROAS) goes up. A Statista report from 2023 confirmed that average CPCs for search ads are still climbing, making this kind of relevance more important than ever.

Using “Comparisons” and “Alphabetical” for Competitive Edge

Answer the Public gives you more than just direct questions. It also shows you how users size up their options and what other terms they associate with your product, which you can use for competitive ads and finding new keyword pools.

Uncovering Competitive Insights with “Comparisons”

The “Comparisons” wheel is where you find searches that use words like “vs,” “and,” “or,” “like,” and “versus.” For our “digital marketing course” example, you’d likely see “digital marketing course vs certification,” “digital marketing course and job placement,” or “digital marketing course like HubSpot.”

This data is priceless for figuring out your competitive field and what matters to users as they make a decision. If you see people comparing your product to a specific competitor (“digital marketing course vs. [Competitor X]”), you can run ads that tackle that comparison head-on, focusing on your unique selling points. For example, an ad could say: “Why Our Digital Marketing Course Beats Competitor X: Real-World Projects & Mentorship.”

Likewise, if users are searching for “course and job placement,” it’s a huge signal that your ads need to talk about career support and show off graduate success stories. This shifts your advertising from just talking about yourself to engaging directly with the user’s internal debate.

Expanding Keyword Sets with “Alphabetical” and “Related”

The “Alphabetical” and “Related” lists can seem a bit overwhelming, but they are fantastic for finding long-tail keyword opportunities and new ad group ideas. The “Alphabetical” view just lists every term the tool found, organized by the alphabet, giving you a massive list of associated concepts. The “Related” section gives you broader, semantically connected topics.

While you might not write ad copy directly from these lists, they can point you toward new ad groups or even new campaign directions. For “digital marketing course,” the “Alphabetical” list might show you “digital marketing course Atlanta” (a clear signal for geographic targeting), “digital marketing course free” (a signal to address budget-conscious users), or “digital marketing course duration” (a signal to address logistical questions). Each of these could be its own highly targeted ad group with specific messaging.

Pro Tip: Don’t just give these lists a quick glance. Export the data to a spreadsheet (I’ll get to that next) and hunt for clusters of terms that point to a specific sub-topic or user segment. These clusters are often the pockets of opportunity your competitors have totally missed because they’re only bidding on the obvious, broad terms.

Exporting and Deep Diving into the Data

The visualizations are great for a quick look, but the real power of Answer the Public for coming up with ad ideas is unlocked when you export the raw data and analyze it yourself.

Downloading the CSV File

On the results page, you’ll see a “Download CSV” button, usually in the top right corner of the data sections. Click it. This will give you a spreadsheet with every single query and term the tool generated. This is how you get past the pretty pictures and start working with the data properly.

I never skip this step. Downloading the CSV gives you a level of granular control that you just can’t get from the web interface. It’s the difference between getting a highlight reel and having the full transcript of what your audience is thinking.

Filtering and Clustering Search Terms for Ad Groups

Open that CSV file in Google Sheets or Excel. You’ll see columns for the search terms and maybe a “volume” score if you’re on a paid plan. Now you can start filtering and grouping.

1. Filter by Question Type: First, filter the list by question words like “what,” “how,” or “why.” Put all the “how to” queries together, for instance. These are now candidates for a “how-to” ad group.
2. Identify Intent: Go through the terms and add your own labels for intent (“informational,” “commercial,” “navigational”). A query like “best digital marketing course” is clearly commercial, making it perfect for an ad group focused on conversions.
3. Look for Common Themes: Just by scanning the list or using a simple text filter, you can find recurring words. If you see “certification” popping up a lot next to “digital marketing course,” you should create an ad group all about the value of getting certified, with ad copy that talks about industry recognition.
4. Spot Pain Points: Filter for words that signal a problem, like “struggle,” “difficult,” or “expensive.” These are perfect opportunities to frame your product as the solution. An ad with the headline “Stop Struggling with Digital Marketing: Our Course Makes It Easy” speaks directly to that pain.

Pro Tip: Your work isn’t done yet. You need to combine this data with what you see in Google Ads Keyword Planner. Answer the Public is fantastic for discovering user intent, but Keyword Planner gives you the hard data on search volume and competition. Cross-reference the keyword clusters you created to focus on the terms that have both high relevance (from Answer the Public) and enough search volume to be worth your time (from Keyword Planner).

Crafting Ad Copy and Creative Angles

Now that you have all these insights from Answer the Public, you can finally turn that raw data into ad copy and creative ideas that will actually perform.

Developing Headlines and Descriptions that Address User Queries

Every single question or prepositional phrase you found is a potential headline or line of description copy. If users are asking “how to choose a digital marketing course?”, your ad headline could be “Guide: Choosing the Right Digital Marketing Course,” which leads to an educational blog post. Or you could be more direct with “Expert-Led Digital Marketing Courses: Start Your Career Today” if you’re confident your course is the answer they need.

Use the description to provide the answer. If the query was “digital marketing course with job placement,” your ad description should detail your career services: “Gain Job-Ready Skills. Our Course Includes Career Coaching & Placement Assistance.” This direct match between the user’s query and your ad copy is what drives ad relevance sky-high.

My take: Writing generic ad copy is the fastest way I know to burn through an ad budget. If you’re not speaking directly to the questions your audience is asking, you might as well be shouting into a hurricane. Answer the Public literally gives you the script.

Brainstorming Visuals and Calls to Action (CTAs)

Your insights from Answer the Public should also guide your ad creative. If “how to make vegan protein shakes taste good?” is a top query, your ads for a plant-based protein powder should feature images of delicious-looking shakes, maybe even with a recipe in the creative. If “digital marketing course salary” is a common search, your ad visuals could show a graph of potential salary growth or video testimonials from successful graduates talking about their careers.

Your CTAs also need to match the user’s intent. For informational queries, use CTAs like “Learn More,” “Download Guide,” or “Explore Benefits.” For commercial queries, go with “Shop Now,” “Enroll Today,” or “Get Your Free Trial.” When you align the CTA with the user’s stage in their journey, which Answer the Public helps you uncover, your conversion rates will improve.

Testing and Iterating Based on Performance

Launching your ads is not the end of the process. You have to constantly watch the performance of your different ad variations. Which headlines are getting the best CTR? Which descriptions are leading to the most sign-ups? Use this real-world performance data to sharpen your understanding of what your audience wants and to come up with even better ad ideas. Answer the Public gives you the starting point, but your own ad account data is what validates your theories.

Expected Outcome: When you use tailored ad copy and visuals to directly answer user questions, you’ll see a real, measurable lift in your ad engagement metrics. This data-first approach to creative takes the guesswork out of the equation and puts your ad budget behind messages you know will connect.

Using search listening with Answer the Public allows marketers to create ad campaigns that are not just seen but actually understood by the audience. By directly answering their questions and addressing their concerns, you create ads that work. In 2026, this deep-dive approach into user intent isn’t just a nice-to-have, it’s a requirement for effective advertising.