Google’s New Ad Format
So last week Google rolled out a new PPC (Pay Per Click) ad format, it seems that recently, every time I look at the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) I see something new! This is great for us advertisers, giving us more to play with and ultimately, more to use to differentiate ourselves from the competition.
Day by day Google seems to be moving further away from the old school standard text ad and is developing adwords into a more integrated PPC platform, allowing more integration with Google Products, Local Search, Site Link Extensions, Phone Extensions and new ad formats, the options for advertisers are developing and expanding and as such so should our strategies.
So, back to the new ad format, well the first time I noticed it on the SERP the advertiser was using site links, the full character limit in the display url plus the line 1 ad description (The one that is pulled up to the headline in Google’s new format) contained keywords along with the title, so there were quite a few bold words on display. My first thought was wow, that really looks like an SEO listing! And I guess if I was a cynical person then that could lead me to think that this latest change was conceived to close the gap between SEO listings and PPC ads… therefore driving more PPC shy users to click on Paid ads…
However, I am not a cynic and therefore I did not come to this conclusion, but an interesting observation none the less, and either way, any tool that drives users to PPC, where we can more effectively funnel them towards a higher quality, better converting PPC page is going to be good for us the advertisers, as well as the Consumer and also Google, so everyones happy!
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