In our most recent webinar, {Google AdWords Holiday Announcements}, we discussed some of the major updates and innovations from Google. As you’re preparing for yet another exciting holiday season, here’s some tactics that’ll help elevate your marketing campaign to a whole new level.
Expanded Text Ads
Google has completely modified ads from Standard Text Ads to Expanded Text Ads (ETAs). With this new feature, you’re allowed two headlines (at 30 characters each), one description line (at 80 characters), and two paths (at 15 characters each) instead of the usual format were used to. This means more real estate space. What makes this even more interesting is the ads will display on both desktop and mobile.
Our team has been testing these over the past three weeks and comparing them with Standard Text Ads. We found a 74% uplift in Click-Through Rate (CTR). Early results showed ETAs are dominating on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) for both desktop and mobile, with higher CTRs and lower Cost Per Clicks (CPCs).
What are some of our recommendations?
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Concentrate more on headlines during headlines.
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Use the second headline to highlight special offers or promotions.
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Draft ETAs for both Google and Bing.
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Keep testing ETAs to understand the impact they have on your account.
Price Extensions
Price Extensions are a new way to showcase services, products, and prices related to the holidays on both mobile and tablets. What exactly does this mean? You’ll gain additional real estate on mobile SERP. They’ll only appear when your ad is in First Position and sometimes the extension may appear without the description. The layout is [25 character header] – [25 character description] – $[Price].
What are some of our recommendations?
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Show holiday tailored price extensions with offer prices for returning users and take them to different landing pages.
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Use Price Extensions in conjunction with Call Extensions and Location Extensions to generate calls and visits from highly qualified, ready to buy clients during the holidays.
Responsive Ads
Now ads are more responsive AND one ad will now fit in almost any ad space, whether it’s desktop, mobile, or desktop. Our findings indicate that Google is slowly diving into the world of native advertising. Google is also helping your ads by letting them adapt to where they’re being displayed. Google will be making more money by displaying perfect size ads on more than two million apps and websites on the Google Display Network.
What are some of our recommendations?
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Be ready for a responsive web during holidays since your audience will use different devices to complete the transaction.
Demographics for Search
Now you can reach your customers in new ways during the holidays. With this feature, you can show the right ad at the right time to the right audience on the SERP with the help of demographic targeting. What’s really impressive is how it shows unique offers in ads for different gender and different age groups.
Device-Specific Campaigns
Now you can effectively manage bids while reaching consumers across devices during the holidays. You’ll have a lot of work ahead of this holiday season since you need to duplicate or triplicate the campaigns based on the device you want to budget. Setting bid adjustments at the overall targeting level is the most straightforward way to manage performance.
What are some of our recommendations?
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Understand performance across devices before creating new device specific campaigns.
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Use new AdWords Assisting Device Report to understand how different devices are assisting in final conversions and bid accordingly.
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Hack to equalize your device-level performance to aggregate using the below formula:
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Step 1 : Device Bid adjustment ratio = Total full value CPA/Device full value CPA
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Step 2 : Device Bid adjustment change = (Device Bid adjustment ratio -1)*100
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Customer Match for Shopping
Now you can re-engage your holiday customers with Customer Match for Shopping. Our findings indicated that product ads and customer match had a 16$% uplift in CTR versus regular shopping.
What are some of our suggestions?
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Re-target previous year holiday purchasers based on different segments and different bids – a new opportunity to focus campaigns on your highest-value audiences – your previous purchasers, rewards members, newsletter subscribers, or local in-store shoppers.
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Create a specific campaign with all products and target only to your customers with higher bids.
TruView for Shopping Ads
Now you have even better branding opportunities during the holidays for merchants running TrueView for shopping ads. We found that YouTube is the next big shopping destination during the holidays. Why? 47% of the U.S. populations says that YouTube helps them when making a decision about something to buy at least once a month. TrueView for shopping campaigns allows you to serve Product Listing Ads alongside your TrueView in-stream video ads.
Showcase Shopping Ads
Now there’s a new ad format for broad and non-broad searches. More than 40% of shopping-related queries on Google are for broad terms such as “summer dresses” or “living room furniture”. 44% of people mentioned using images to find ideas while shopping online. Shopping has been performing well, but how can you reach more of an audience during the holidays?
Cross-Device Attribution Reports and Benchmarks
Now you can measure customer paths across devices during the holidays. Track cross-device conversion paths, including those that feature search ad clicks from more than one device in a conversion path.
Now that you know all the basics, don’t you feel more prepared for the upcoming holiday season? Stay tuned as we keep you up-to-date on all the industry updates.
