The Benefits of Google’s New Extended Adverts
Following recent changes Google made to AdWords, removing ads on the right side of the desktop, Google has announced yet more new changes that could make a huge difference to your advertising campaign.
Expanded text ads have now arrived in what has been referred to as the biggest change to AdWords since it came into existence. The new style ads increase the amount of text that is shown to users by more than double. This is seen as part of Google’s attempt to make the user experience more streamlined on both desktop and mobile. As more than half of all searches are now made on mobile, Google aim to make the experience the same on all platforms.
What’s the difference?
The main difference between the two styles of text ad is that the newly expanded ads feature a much larger character limit. Most importantly, this includes a huge change in the headline text with an increase from 25 characters to two headline fields of up to 30 characters each. This makes the headline more prominent so that you can attract the attention of the user. There has also been the addition of a longer and consolidated description field. Instead of two sets of 35 characters, there is now one field of 80 characters so that you can get your message across. Google have also simplified the domain field as the text is extracted directly from the final URL.
We have included a screenshot below that shows the difference between the two listings. The Expanded Text Ad on the right is more eye-catching and includes more text than the standard text ad on the left. This provides more room to describe your product or service to the customer and also more space to optimise.
When do the changes come into effect?
The changes are being rolled out to AdWords now and you should be able to choose between expanded or standard text ads when setting up a new campaign. You should be automatically directed to set up an expanded text ad, but you can switch back to standard text ads for the time being if you wish to. However, standard ads will no longer be available to create after the 26th October and you will only be able to create expanded ads. Any standard ads that were created at this point will still run, however.
What are the benefits?
So what are the benefits of switching to expanded text ads and should we all be using them? Well, one of the main benefits that the expanded text ads promise is an increased CTR which could, in turn, lead to more conversions and hopefully increase revenue. This is due to the fact that there is more text to optimise on the expanded ad and it should also help to grab the attention of those searching. The increased text field also means that you will have more text to experiment with to find out what works best on the campaign. A large number of people using the expanded text ads have already reported a huge growth in CTR that your business could also benefit from.
There are also some other benefits to the expanded text ads that could also improve your campaign. Separate device bidding is now available, after it was lost with enhanced campaigns. This allows you even more room to experiment and optimise your AdWords campaign to make sure that it is the most cost effective. You should be making the most of the expanded ads to ensure that your campaign is truly optimised and reaching its full potential.
