Google has announced new ad extension improvements for advertisers geared towards easier management. Updates come in sitelinks, callouts, and structured snippets additions.
According to Google Search, ad extensions give users an additional way to interact with ads, sometimes offering a 20% increase in click-through rate (CTR) when four sitelinks are shown in ads.
Let’s take a closer look at the updates.
Automated extension eligibility
Jenny Marvin, Official Communications Officer for Google Ads, announce Automatic add-ons will be eligible to be displayed along with add-ons added manually. This change will be rolled out sometime in the middle of March.
Ad extensions eligible to be shown in conjunction with manual extensions include:
- Website section links
- callouts
- Structured excerpts
This change in eligibility for automatic extensions helps your ad get more real estate in the SERP. Previously, the above automatic plugins were not eligible to display when manual plugins were created.
What are the implications of that? For example, if two manual sitelink extensions are created in your ads, your ad will only be eligible to show those manual extensions. With this update, your ad will now be able to show two manual extensions, as well as the automatic extensions, at the same time.
Keep in mind that your account must be enabled in auto-adds for it to display.
Automated sprawl reports
In addition to automatic extension eligibility, Google is making updates to its reporting capabilities.
Reports will now be viewable individually on the Google Ads Extensions page.
On this individual level, you can pause or remove any automatic extension. This allows for easier management of your campaigns.
You will also be able to easily identify extensions that were created manually or created automatically by Google.
Possibility to view the manual extension
Google already allows you to create extensions at a more granular level (account, campaign or ad group). However, the more subtle these extensions are created, the more they may prevent extensions that are built at a higher level from being ineligible to display.
With the new updates coming in March, the higher level eligibility will change.
Extensions at the campaign or account level are eligible to appear in your ads if they are expected to improve performance. The expected performance improvement comes from Google’s machine learning algorithm.
If you’ve created highly specific ad extensions at the ad group level, it’s a good idea to review any campaign or account-level extensions that may be eligible to show in your ads. If there are any unrelated extensions to these ad groups, you’ll have to reorganize them in a way that makes sense for your account.
summary
Upcoming changes to automated plugins allow for easier management and visibility of automated plugins that are created.
Updates to the visibility of manual extensions may allow for a higher performance improvement, however it is critical that you proactively review extensions at the account or campaign level. If your campaigns have more granular extensions, this could create more manual work in the near future to ensure that all ad extensions are more relevant to users.
Featured image: K.unshu / Shutterstock
