This is the major change that we have been waiting for in the PPC landscape since the removal of the right sidebar ads earlier this year. It is sure to be a game changer.
For those that have been aware of this change they will surely gain a short term competitive advantage at the very least. For those that weren’t you should be getting your ducks in a row as soon as possible.
What Are Expanded Text Ads?
They are pretty self-explanatory but we are going to show you the specifics of what we are dealing with. First let’s recap on the standard text ad:
Headline – 25 characters
Description Line 1 – 35 characters
Description Line 2 – 35 characters
Display URL – 35 characters
This has been the norm for many years, until now. Here is what the new expanded text ads look like:
Headline 1 – 30 characters
Headline 2 – 30 characters
Description – 80 characters
Path – / 15 characters / 15 characters /
This opens up a huge opportunity to better describe your products or services in your ads. Here is an example of what this might look like before and after.
What Does This Mean for Businesses?
This means that companies will get a brief moment to outshine competition in a big way. The slowest to react will suffer in the short and long term. In the short term their ads will suffer a drop in click through rate and quality score, whilst long term the ads will not be shown all together.
It has already been proven that the increase in click through rate just from using these extended ads. In early testing on mobile, ads that are giving more information to consumers have cited more than 20% improvement.
Standard Text Ads will not be Accepted from October 26
This is where businesses that don’t monitor their Adwords will suffer big time. Especially considering the time of year coming up to Christmas when sales should be starting to rise. After this date, campaigns using only standard text ads will cease to display in search results. This makes it vital to get your extended ads in place before this date – but as mentioned, the earlier the better.
Early Stage Issues
There will undoubtedly be more tweaks and changes around expanded ads as the months go by, and there have already been some early complaints. Some users have stated that the 2nd headline has been cut off in some of their ads. on desktop. Google have responded to this saying to limit your headlines to 33 characters to avoid this but that is too extravagant for a handful of desktop results. The benefits you get from the additional information far outweighs the risk of this issue.
The Introduction of Separate Device Bidding
This is a second big update that has arrived this week. The ability to modify your bid based on device is key change. Being able to change this should give more control to advertisers and potentially provide more opportunities for better results across mobile and tablet. It is still early days and there is a lot of testing to be done around this new manual function (previously controlled by automated bidding systems).
If you aren’t seeing this option yet in your Adwords then don’t panic. Separate device bidding is reported to take a few months to roll out so it might not have landed in your account just yet.
That’s It For Now
There are sure to be plenty of updates and case studies around this as it continues to roll out and especially up to the standard text ad deadline in October. Have you noticed the change in your Adwords account yet? Has expanded text ads already begun to impact you? Let us know in the comments and we can offer you some support.
