Written by Antoni Saurina
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It has been a few months since Google removed ads from the top right. There were many speculations and in the end, this change was aimed at displaying search results in a more or less homogeneous way on different devices (computer, tablet and mobile), giving priority to the correct display on mobile devices. In this sense and to improve the display of ads, the advertising platform has recently launched the new expanded text ads, also called expanded text ads.
Google is making changes to improve the display of search results on mobile devices
What expanded text ads look like
If we had to use a single adjective to describe the ads, it would be, as the name suggests, extensive. The new announcements are almost twice as many as the previous ones and all fields have been expanded. From a title with up to 25 characters, two 30-character titles are added at the top. In addition, instead of two description lines of 35 characters each, we now have a long description of 80 characters. Finally, the visible URL is no longer penalized as much in terms of customization as it was previously for using a long domain, as it is now added automatically and what we can define are two additional 15-character fields as directories in the URL. Even so, it is better to keep in mind that it is better to have a domain as short as possible, because on mobile devices the URL is shortened if the domain to be advertised is longer than 12 characters.
Expanded text ads are almost twice as big as old ones
As you can see, the change is important and the information that we can add with these new ads is quite superior to that of the previous ads, so the way of writing ads is going to change.
Writing of advertisements
Now we have the opportunity to improve ads that barely allowed us to add a couple of direct sentences to more coherent and better written ones. Thanks to the two available titles, we can keep the direct sentences, although in this case better written and with additional information. The long description of 80 characters allows us to elaborate a careful description that can be more human and that reaches the user to motivate him to visit the advertised web page.
Thanks to the new ads, we can write better texts, more coherent and richer in information.
With a higher quality and more visible ad, the results should be better than with the old ads. To make sure that this is the case, we will have to analyze the data obtained and compare them with the old ads.
Analyze advertisements
To analyze the ads and compare them with the old ones, it must be taken into account that these are shown on computers as well as on tablets and mobile devices, so if previously we could have separate ads for computers and mobiles, this is not possible at the moment.
This creates a problem for us in analyzing ads, since user behavior is very different on a computer and on a cell phone because the screen and interface differ so much.
Extended ads do not allow you to specify the device you are targeting
In order to perform a correct analysis we can use the segments, which will show us information about the behavior that the ads are having on each device and thus make modifications or other strategies if necessary. This data can be found in the Segment button > Device.
Now we can compare the classic ads with the new ones and decide whether to keep them or to remove them because the new ones offer better results.
Competitive advantage over competitors
As a general rule, the new ads will give an initial advantage to the first advertisers to implement them, since having more visibility will lead to more clicks and better results. That’s why it’s vitally important that we take the time to implement these new ads that can make campaign results better.
Creating expanded text ads before the competition will give us an additional advantage in the short term.
As can be seen, the visibility of the second ad is better than that of the competitors. Its large size will give you higher CTR, lower cost per click and better overall results. It also has a more elaborated and coherent text that helps to inform the user more and better.
Inconveniences
Expanded ads are not all advantages. We have previously mentioned that we do not have the option to select a specific ad for mobile devices, so there will be times when an ad may be excellent for viewing on computers but not for mobile devices, and vice versa.
Expanded ads do not allow you to select which type of devices the ads are targeted to.
The solutions are less than optimal. On the one hand we can make classic mobile-specific ads and analyze if they really work better to keep them.
Another solution would be to create desktop and mobile campaigns. To do this we would have to duplicate all campaigns and make bid adjustments of -100% on the devices on which we do not want the ads to appear.
This is not a very good solution in terms of management work, since it duplicates our work without knowing if the results of separating them can compensate for it.
Conclusions
In general, the incorporation of expanded ads is positive, as they allow the display of more complete ads than the old ones. They also have more visibility which, a priori, should be reflected in an improvement of the CTR.
Even so, not being able to decide on which devices the ads will be shown will reduce the effectiveness of the campaigns. We hope that in a short period of time Google will add the option as it was before and in this way we will be able to improve in this aspect.
What do you think about the new expanded text ads, and have you tried how they work? You can leave your impressions in the comments below.
