It’s been a big year for text ads. Google (my employer)
introduced responsive search ads in July, simplifying ad creation and testing for everyone. Last month, Google enabled ads that include a third headline and a longer description. Text ads are more expanded than they’ve ever been.
There’s more room than ever to get your message across to potential customers, which is a beautiful thing. Making sense of all of these changes can be a challenge, especially as responsive search ads make their way to an account near you. Because of these updates, I thought it would be a good idea to share Google’s suggestions on how you could implement all of these formats in one big happy account.
How to think about ads in 2018
A year and a half ago, I wrote about how to create excellent ads, and the overall guidance back then still applies: create a bunch of great ad components, then set those components free (with the magic pixie dust of machine learning). This advice still holds true. The main thing that’s changed is that there are more ways to create those great components.
Ultimately, you’ll want three to five ads per ad group, as many extensions as possible and an optimized ad rotation. The only difference is that “ads” can mean a few different things these days.
Responsive search ads: machine learning’s best friend
Responsive search ads, still in beta, are pretty cool. Search Engine Land’s Ginny Marvin has covered a lot of the basics, so check that out if you haven’t already. And if you’ve read my previous posts about ad optimization, you can imagine that I’m a big fan of this ad format.
Here are some pointers when it comes to responsive search ads:
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