Google AdWords: Expanded Text Ads overview
What Are Expanded Text Ads? Expanded Text Ads (ETA’s) are the next generation of AdWords text ads, designed for a mobile-first world with both users and advertisers in mind. Expanded Text Ads are approximately 2x bigger than standard text ads and Google reports that Expanded Text Ads are seeing an approximate 20% increase in CTR (Click Through Rate). Expanded Text Ads differ from Standard Text Ads in a few important ways.
Expanded Text Ads (ETA’s) are the next generation of AdWords text ads, designed for a mobile-first world with both users and advertisers in mind. Expanded Text Ads are approximately 2x bigger than standard text ads and Google reports that Expanded Text Ads are seeing an approximate 20% increase in CTR (Click Through Rate).
Expanded Text Ads differ from Standard Text Ads in a few important ways. They have:
- Two headline fields (up to 30 characters each)
- A single, expanded description field (up to 80 characters)
- A Display URL that uses your final URL’s domain
- Two optional ”Path” fields, used in the ad’s Display URL (up to 15 characters each)
Here’s a real-world comparison with Kook’s own recent Expanded Text Ad implementation:
Standard Text Ad:
What’s happening to standard text ads?
Starting January 31, 2017, AdWords will no longer support the creation or editing of standard text ads. New text ads generated after that date should use the expanded text ad format. Existing standard text ads will continue to serve past January 31, 2017.
5 quick tips for implementing Expanded Text Ads
- Create expanded text ads for all active ad groups to ensure an improvement across all products/services.
- Compare the performance of your new ETA’s against your standard text ads before pausing your old ads. Just because they’re newer/bigger/better doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll outperform standard text ads in every scenario.
- When comparing performance, ensure you have enough data to prove the increased performance of Expanded Text Ads before pausing standard text ads. For example; an expanded text ad with 5 impressions and 1 click (CTR: 20%) does not have enough statistical data to imply that it is performing better then a standard text ad with 5000 impressions and 500 clicks (CTR: 10%).
- Make the most of your new ad real estate – the 50% increase in ad characters has been implemented with the general idea that this can increase CTR. Make the most of it.
- Reconsider your entire ad messaging for best result – don’t just add in an extra sentence to fulfill the new character limit.
Want to learn more? Contact Kook’s Google AdWords team or read Google’s Guide to Expanded Text Ads.
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