Google Adwords introduce expanded text ads
At the recent Google Performance Summit, Google announced a significant update to their Adwords offering for advertisers; much larger, expanded text ads, for search advertising.
Expanded text ads have been tried and tested and now they’re ready to be rolled out later this year.
Currently advertisers are allowed one 25-character headline, two 35-word character description lines and are expected to manually enter display URL (any mismatch can cause the ad to be disapproved) .
So what’s changing?
Later this year advertisers will be able to utilise two 30 character headlines and one 80-character description line, and on top of this, the URL will automatically be extracted from the domain to ensure accuracy.
Is this a good change for Advertisers?
To state the obvious, more characters means better messaging. Advertisers (and agencies alike) now have the ability to completely change creative strategies and generate more awareness through a better understanding of an advertisers offering. In turn, resulting in the intended results; more click through’s.
This update comes as part of a larger intention to create a seamless search engine experience across multiple devices, regardless of screen size and format. As Google release these changes, advertisers can see desktop and mobile experiences becoming one, providing users with a same format experience, cross device.
The changes have been tested by Google, and recent reports show an increase of clicks by up to 20 percent.
What does this mean for Advertisers?
Quite simply, review and audit all ad creatives. Don’t just add another header, use the extra space to create an enticing headline that captures the brilliance of your company and what you offer. This is an opportunity that many advertisers (including your competition) will be taking to re-evaluate how to present products and services as the strongest choice for customers to click on, so ensure your offering continues to engage and educate pre click through.
Google has fed back that the best liked ads focus on people’s needs – utilise this and look at call to actions, using the ad space to rewrite them so they centre on your customer’s needs directly.
For advertisers that have large adwords account, prioritise your testing efforts, this is a new ad format, focus on the campaigns and adgroups that are critical to the business. If you work with an agency, communicate your thoughts on how the additional characters can be best utilised bearing in mind your USPs and offering for a potential customer. Don’t be afraid to have a “start from scratch” type attitude, whereby all campaigns are reviewed again bearing in mind the above. This will ensure ads continue to carry an up to date, useful, and relevant message for your brand.
Continue to utilise additional adwords features such as ad extensions, as these will still be important in driving more clicks and therefore leads by taking up more real estate within the listings.
This update to Google Adwords is a great addition from the search giant and as a PPC Agency we welcome the functionality for the obvious benefit it will provide advertisers it utilised correctly during the next few months.
POLARIS is an SEO Agency in London providing SEO services across the Ecommerce, travel and B2B sectors. Please contact one of our account managers at info@polarisagency.co.uk today for a free audit.
[Figure 1] http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2016/05/25/google-expanded-text-ads
