Google announces new product features & AdWords redesign
By GroupM Connect
Background
Google’s annual Performance Summit in San Francisco kicks off today, Tuesday May 24. During the summit, Google will be unveiling some new product features as well as showcasing its redesigned AdWords interface.
The theme of Google’s launches appears to be redesigning and rebuilding AdWords for a world in which the majority of consumers are now searching from a mobile device.
Google is breaking its new launches and changes into four areas:
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Intent + Mobile
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Intent + Local
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Intent + Audience
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Intent + Tools
Intent + Mobile
Within Intent + Mobile, Google is announcing the full roll-out of Expanded Text Ads, Device Bid Adjustments and Responsive Display Ads.
Expanded Text Ads
What is new? Currently, Standard Text Ads consist of a headline of 25 characters, two description lines of 35 characters each and a display URL. Over the coming months, Google will phase Standard Text Ads out and replace them with Expanded Text Ads.
Expanded Text Ads (ETAs) will consist of two headlines of 30 characters each, a description line of 80 characters and up to two paths in the display URL (.com/examplepath1/examplepath2). Note that the display URL field will be removed, with the ad automatically displaying the domain from the final URL.
How will this impact advertisers? The new ad format will provide nearly 50% more text space, including a more prominent headline for advertisers to highlight products and services. Google estimates that ETAs will give advertisers a 20% higher click-through-rate.
As well as preparing the new, longer ad copies for accounts, advertisers should set additional budget aside for the incremental paid clicks that will seemingly come from organic listings being demoted further down the search engine results page.
Launch date: Early Q3 2016.
Device Bid Adjustments
What is new? Google introduced Enhanced Campaigns in July 2013 where a max. CPC is given for the desktop (which includes tablet) bids, and -100% to +300% bid adjustments can be set for mobile bids.
The Device Bid Adjustments change to AdWords is making the default bid device agnostic- advertisers will now decide whether the desktop, mobile or tablet bid will be default and then set % bid adjustments for the other two remaining device types. With this change, Google is now allowing tablet only bid adjustments to be made (broken out from the desktop bid). The bid adjustment range will also be increased to -100% to +900%.
How will this impact advertisers? These changes give more control to advertisers. Advertisers will be able to bid separately for tablet clicks and they will be able to make higher bid adjustments between devices.
Moving the default bid value away from desktop to device agnostic is also a neat move from an AdWords housekeeping perspective.
Launch date: Q3 2016.
Responsive Display Ads
What is new? Responsive Display Ads will become the default ad unit on the Google Display Network (GDN), to reach users across text, image and native inventory.
Text only ad submissions will be phased out.
Advertisers will upload an image, logo, headline and description and Google will arrange them to fit onto pages, or in ads, across the GDN. These ad units will respond to the design of the page, ad space or type of inventory offered by the publisher.
How will this impact advertisers? Google will have the creative assets from an advertiser to serve the best ad unit for any ad space, ultimately leading to higher CTRs.
Another major benefit of this change is that advertisers will have greater control over their ads. Currently, Google occasionally combines GDN text ads with third party images. Moving forwards, Google will have the creative assets to only serve an image submitted by the advertiser.
Similar to ETAs, advertisers (or their agencies) will need to resubmit creative for the GDN and be prepared for greater CTRs.
Launch date: Q3/ Q4 2016.
To continue reading please download
Google Product Feature Updates (PDF, 0.1Mb)