What are Expanded Ads?

In summary, expanded text ads are designed to cater for the mobile world that we now live in, for both users & advertisers. They have almost 50% more ad text space for you to highlight your products and services before people click into your ad. This provides the user with a better user experience, especially for users on mobile/tablet devices when on the go.

Expanded ads will be replacing standard text ads from 26th October 2016.

What’s different about Expanded text ads?

  • The Expanded ads have two headlines, instead of one.

The additional headline option will enable you to include more text in your ads. You will have up to 30 characters per headline instead of the standard 25. The headlines will appear next to each other, separated by a hyphen. If the user’s screen is small the headlines may move to a second line.

  • The two description lines have now been merged into one.

So, Instead of the two 35-character description lines, The expanded ads have one 80-character description line.

  • The display URL domain will now be based on the final URL domain.

So, you will no longer have to enter your display URL when creating a new ad, This has been being phased out for some time.  AdWords will now use the domain from your final URL, then give an option to combine with the Path fields. Path fields will be added to the display URL, after the main domain.

Below is an example of the how the new Expanded ads will look, including the path options.

Expanded Ads 1

In this example, www.Sleepinggiantmedia.co.uk/Award-Winning/PPC-SEO-Social is the display URL, and Award-Winning & PPC-SEO-Socal are the path text.

 

Your text ads will now be mobile optimized!

As the expanded ads will be mobile optimise you will no longer have to select the mobile device setting when creating/editing a text ad. You will see a preview of your ad in both desktop & mobile format when you are generating the expanded ad.

What now?

Expanded ads are going to be replacing standard text ad from October 2016, So now is the time to start getting these added to your current campaigns (you can still use your standard text ads alongside the expanded ads)

You can add these in AdWords directly.

Click on +Ad, under the Ad tab

Adwords 2

You will then see that the area where you usually create standard text ads will now have the expanded ad copy option first. (You can still switch back to the standard ad text if you are wanting to use them)

Expanded Ads 3

As you create your ads you will see the preview to the right for desktop and mobile. Once you are happy, go go go!

  • If you are adding expanded ads alongside your standard text ads, we would recommend labelling the expanded ads so you are able to compare these against your standard ads.

You can also add these via the AdWords editor. The most recent version is AdWords Editor 11.5 and when you update you will see the expanded ads option. The AdWords Editor also enables you create & edit expanded text ads at scale, making it easier to migrate all of your standard text ads before October.

If you want to learn more about AdWords, we are launching our GIANT Campus Training Centre in a few weeks! Sign up to secure your place now!