Expanded Text Ads Take Place of Standard Text Ads

 

What Happened?

As of January 31, Google is no longer accepting standard text ads, and all existing standard text ads will be converted to extended ad formats. Your company’s standard ads will continue to run, but you will not be able to create new standard text ads or edit existing ones.

Google began testing their expanded ads in mid-2016, and the new ad format has been called the biggest change to text ads since Adwords launched over 15 years ago. Expanded text ads feature more prominent headlines and allow two 30-character headlines, a longer 80-character description line, and automatic domain extraction from your final URL, which ensures accuracy and avoids disapprovals. They will show across all platforms and wrap automatically based on device size. Expanded text ads also improve click-through rates, as more text leads to greater visibility for your company.

 

What Does This Mean for Marketers?

Here at Enilon, we implemented expanded ads for most of our clients in July of 2016. Our Manager of Digital Advertising, Rebecca Elliott, weighed in on the benefits expanded ads have had on our client’s account since launching the new ad type:

“Expanded text ads are a new feature we are taking full advantage of for our Paid clients. They allow us to give a better description of our clients’ benefits, offers, incentives and overall qualities which were limited in the standard form,” she said.

Rebecca added, “One of the biggest factors is being able to include two headline callouts with longer character limits. Instead of having to choose only one of our client’s features that distinguishes them from their competitors, we can now include two! For example, since the launch of Expanded Text ads in one of our cutting edge client’s account, we saw an impressive 28% increase in CTR within the first month of the ad being live!”

10 Ways to Ensure Success

To ensure your expanded text ads are successful, Google issued a list of suggested 10 best practices:

1. Test multiple versions of your expanded text ads.
2. Focus on testing your headlines. After all, they’re the most important part of your ad.
3. Replicate what works in your standard text ads in your expanded text ads.
4. Consider shorter headlines on brand terms. You aren’t required to use all available characters.
5. Leave your standard ads running until the new expanded versions are consistently outperforming them. Leave your top-performing ads running, even if they’re shorter.
6. Review your pre-existing ads for previous success with longer headlines.
7. Don’t implement the same expanded text ad across many different ad groups. Your ads should be tailored to users’ searches.
8. Don’t blindly insert a new second headline without changing the rest of the ad.
9. Don’t write expanded text ads that lose their relevance to a user’s query.
10. Don’t leave out specific benefits or attributes of your product that had proven to be enticing in the past.

Want Help?
If you’re having trouble figuring out how expanded ads can be used to help boost your business, Enilon can help. Contact us.

 

 

Photo Credit: iStockPhoto.com/inbj