At this year’s’ Google Performance Summit in San Francisco a number of new Adwords features were announced.
The announcement came on the back of Google revealing that they now handle trillions of searches globally, which is a significant increase of the figure of “hundreds of billions” most recently stated, with more than half of those searches starting on mobile devices.
Adwords Individual Device Bid Adjustments
The big announcement was that Google will allow advertisers to set individual bid adjustments for each device type, including mobile, desktop and tablet. This means that you could set your baseline bid for a keyword on a desktop machine and then adjust your bid for mobile and tablet devices separately. You will also be able to do it for up to 900%, which is a significant increase from the previous limit of 300%.
Many Adwords users have been longing for the ability to separate Desktop & Tablet bids since they were combined with the introduction of “Enhanced campaigns” in February 2013.
Adwords Expanded Text Ads
It’s been widely reported that Google has been testing longer text ads in the search results across different devices. Since the removal of the right-side ads, Google has the flexibility to give text ads more characters and unify the way they look across the different devices. Expanded Text ads will be eligible on desktop, mobile & tablet.
The new ad format will have two longer headlines of up to 30 characters each and a longer description line of up to 80 characters.
The display URL can include up to two directory paths that advertisers can use to describe the landing page content. The paths do not have to match the landing page URL.
Image Credit: Google Ads and analytics innovations for a mobile-first world
Based on current testing, Google has stated that some advertisers have reported increases in clickthrough rates of up to 20% compared to current text ads.
The change from the 25-35-35 character format that has been a major constant in the 15 year existence of Adwords is sure to be a big change for Adwords advertisers. It will be launched later in the year, but it is worth planning ahead sooner rather than later!
Similar Audiences For Search
In what could be a huge new feature, Google has actually offered very little public detail on its announcement that it is finally going to let advertisers use Similar Audiences for search campaigns. Demographic and similar audience targeting for search was not included in Google’s official blog post on the updates and only mentioned briefly during the presentation.
Promoted Pins On Maps
Google has rather quietly released the ability for local business’ to advertise on Maps, with an new ad unit that displays alongside organic results. In addition to this, Google has been testing promoted pins which would allow a bidder to display a pin prominently to a nearby user looking at Google Maps, along with a promotional message.
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