There are some interesting new features available from Google ads, and many digital marketers are taking stock of the new opportunities and challenges brought on by these changes. The new buzz phrase is “Responsive text ads” and many people are trying to catch on and understand how to benefit from these changes. Read on to learn the gist of the matter.
What exactly are responsive text ads?
Responsive text ads draw on Google’s increasingly sophisticated machine learning algorithms to split test multiple headline/descriptions combinations and determine the best performing combinations. This innovative (and potentially very useful) approach is now on the verge of rolling out globally, and most advertising accounts should have this feature available by the end of August.
When setting up your Google ads, you should now have access to a new option called responsive text ads. This option allows you to set up as many as fifteen headlines and up to four descriptions, which will be rotated and tested automatically. The resulting ad produced by the machine can include as many as three headlines and two descriptions, composited together by to achieve the best possible click-through and conversion rates.
After a while of running a responsive text ad, the machine learning algorithms will know exactly which combinations of headline and description performs best across different audiences. This information will obviously help improve your bottom line. According to Google, having a wider range keywords built into the larger pool of possible headlines and descriptions will help make these ads more competitive and cost-effective, since their machine algorithms will have more data to experiment with.
What does this change mean for digital marketers?
This is great news for advertisers, since it effectively will reduce their workload by split testing ad copy automatically – a process that can be a little gruelling to set up by hand. Split testing is a crucial step in optimising the performance of a long-running ad campaign in order to keep fine-tuning its results.
With the advent of responsive text ads, the split testing process will be easier, less time consuming and more intuitive. Additionally, you’ll be able to rely on the sophisticated machine learning technologies to help you figure out what are your best performing ads without need to waste too much money or time running your own experiments. In short, you will now be able to rely on Google’s machine learning to help you get the most of your ad budget.
The new text ad formats brought about with these refinements are longer and more detailed than ever. This change is quite assuredly the result of extensive testing and experimentation by Google engineers, who keep looking for the most effective ways to display ads (which naturally keep changing over time). Whereas original Google ads were limited to fewer characters, the latest trend seem to suggest that longer ads with more information – closer in size to a typical Google search result listing – are now the winning trend.
