Google has introduced the first significant change to the structure of its text ads in 15 years meaning that online retailers face the potentially daunting prospect of reworking thousands of listings or face competitors stealing a march from them.
The global launch of expanded text adverts, introduced to better serve the billions of people now accessing the internet through their mobile phones, provide advertisers with the opportunity to include more detail in their adverts – a function that has been proven to increase an advert’s effectiveness by up to 20 per cent.
But rather than view the changes as an unwanted hassle, Dream Agility CEO Elizabeth Clark insists retailers should instead see a genuine opportunity to grow their bottom line.
Clark said: “Google advertising has grown year-on-year for the last decade and 2016 will continue that trend, but text ads have been in decline since the launch of Shopping in 2013 and the loss of the right hand side of the page. However, the news today that being able to export your text ads into expanded text ads, which provide considerably more descriptive space, is a boon for those retailers still dependent upon them.
“Our patent-pending, award-winning technology makes dealing with these changes a painless and very profitable experience because we’ve made it so simple, literally at the touch of a button.
“One of our clients, a leader in their sector, recently used our platform to secure five successive record-breaking months. Another retailer enjoyed their best-ever month after just eight weeks of using our technology.
“So while each retailer might have hundreds or even thousands of adverts that now need changing in order to secure the best possible results, that needn’t be as big a task as they might fear: we can optimise their data at the touch of a button.”
Speaking at the 2016 Google Performance Summit, Sridhar Ramaswamy, Google’s senior vice president of advertising and commerce, said: “In rebuilding search ads for this mobile first world, we’ve made two critical changes.
“(First) our research shows that adverts with longer headlines are more useful to mobile users because they provide more information before they actually touch.
“We’ve also expanded the number of characters that can be in your description line: we now have one long 80-character description line. Combined with your new headlines, that’s nearly 50 per cent more ad text to highlight your products and services.
“Based on early testing, some of our advertisers have reported an increase in click-through-rate of more than 20 per cent compared to traditional text adverts. Taking advantage of this format early will be critical to your success.”