Rather than hiring an agency, many people choose to DIY their PPC and keep it in-house, which is great. But an issue our PPC specialists see with many such businesses is a tendency to neglect the use of ad extensions that can garner the most bang for your buck in a good paid search campaign.
What are Ad Extensions?
Ad extensions are a way to format your ads so they show extra information about your business. In short, it’s basically a way to get the most information into your small piece of digital real estate in which your ads exist. The use of ad extensions improves visibility and value for paid ads by improving CTR and conveying more information across a small space.
The use of ad extensions has proved to be an important part of mobile optimization, because users are often looking for specific bits of information in response to their search queries. For example, a location extension will help someone looking for a product or service nearby find your business or call right from the ad. A review extension might be the determining factor that makes someone click your business over another listing in the search results.
It’s also worth noting that ad extensions tend to positively impact your AdWords quality score. The addition of more information about your business/product/service/promotion/etc. for the user improves the quality of the ad, which thereby improves the quality score. This is why ad extensions are one of the many factors that are weighed in the calculation of the quality score.
Types of Ad Extensions
There are two different types of ad extensions: manual and automated. Manual extensions are obviously those you do yourself, and automated extensions are those that AdWords creates and displays when it predicts that they’ll improve your ad’s performance.
Manual extensions include Apps, Calls, Locations, Reviews, Sitelinks, and Callouts.
Automated extensions include Consumer Ratings, Previous Visits, Seller Ratings, Dynamic Sitelink Extensions, and Dynamic Structure Snippets.
Does it cost extra?
Not really, because you still pay based on keywords. So, you’ll get charged as usual for clicks on the ad as well as for certain interactions that extensions provide. As is true with headline clicks, the most you pay is the minimum amount required to keep your extensions and ad position.
Why is this important?
While the inclusion of ad extensions may seem like an obvious thing, many people running their own search campaigns tend to overlook it.
“In many ways, the paid areas of SERPs are even more competitive than the organic results, so advertisers should make use of all the tools at their disposal to give themselves an edge over the competition,” Tim Miller, HigherVisibility’s resident Paid Search Specialist says. “Ensuring you have thoughtful ad extensions in place can make a difference in 1, getting your ads in front of more searchers and 2, resonating with those users to click on your ad instead of another.”