How To Improve Google Ads Performance With Ad Extensions

What are Ad Extensions?

Ad Extensions are extra pieces of information that enhance your Search ads. A standard text ad consists of 2-3 headlines, 2 description lines and a destination URL and Ad Extensions can appear around them. Google recently renamed them “Assets”, so that’s what to look for in your account.

Types of Ad Extensions

There are various types of Ad Extensions available and each of them serves a different purpose. Most of them can be added manually but some are added automatically by Google and are not available in every account.

• Sitelinks: Display extra links to subpages of your website via sitelinks that consist of a headline and two short descriptions.

• Callout: Communicate your unique selling points or key benefits of your products or services.

• Structured Snippet: Provide structured information about your offerings in pre-set categories, for example, Brands, Types, Services or Styles.

• Call: A clickable phone number next to your destination URL encourages users to contact you directly without going to your website.

• Lead Form: Collect people’s contact details and enquiries directly from the ad through a predefined lead form.

• Price: Feature a list of products or services along with their respective prices.

• App: For businesses with a mobile app, these extensions can send users directly to their app in the App Store or Play Store.

• Promotion: Highlight limited-time promotions, offers or discounts.

• Image: A small image that appears next to or below your text ad. There is not much space so be mindful to use only images that look good in small formats.

• Location: Display your address if you have a physical store you want people to visit. These extensions are clickable and lead straight to Google Maps showing the directions to your location. You need a verified Google My Business account that's linked to Google Ads to use this type of extension.

• Business Name & Logo: The latest additions to the Ad Extensions family that are only available in accounts that completed the Advertiser Verification process.

This is how a text ad with ad extensions can look like on desktop and mobile:

Why are Ad Extensions important?

Ad extensions are often overlooked when building new campaigns but are such a great way to boost your ads’ performance at no extra cost. Especially for Google Grant accounts that don’t have the option of raising their bids and budgets, Ad Extensions can help you stand out in competition with other advertisers.

While Ad Extensions don’t always show (and rarely all at the same time), they positively impact Ad Strength and Quality Score which increases the chance of your ad being displayed if a matching search term triggers one of your keywords. A good Quality Score of 6 or higher also has the added benefit of resulting in lower average CPC (cost-per-click) meaning you get more clicks without raising your budgets.

As you can see in the above examples, ad extensions make your ad take up more space. This increases your chance of getting the click, especially on mobile devices, resulting in overall more clicks and a higher CTR (click-through rate).

By providing extra information and context, Ad Extensions make your overall ad appearance more user-friendly. Users have more options to interact with your ad and get straight to what they want, for example, get directions to your store via a Location extension or navigate to specific pages through Sitelinks.

Best practices for using Ad Extensions

• Use as many as possible: they may not always show but will still help improve your ad quality if you have them set up.

• Set up suitable extensions on the account level: most extensions can be set up on the account level and are automatically applied to each new campaign you create. This makes sense for call, location, business name and logo extensions which shouldn’t change per campaign and often also for sitelinks and callouts.

• Customise extensions per campaign: in other cases, some more customisation is required. For example, if you separate your campaigns by product type or service, the same image, price or lead form wouldn’t work for all campaigns. It makes more sense to set up these extensions on the campaign level to make sure they match with the campaign content.

• Include Ad Extensions in your weekly optimisation: like your keywords and ads, your ad extensions need regular performance reviews, testing and updates.

• Use the scheduling function: avoid manual work by setting a schedule for when you want your extensions to show. Typical use cases for scheduled extensions are limited-time promotions or if you want to show your call extension only during business hours.

• Complete Advertiser Verification: as mentioned above, the Business Name & Logo extensions are not available by default. Go to Tools & Settings > Billing > Advertiser Verification to complete the process and unlock these two extensions.

Conclusion

Google Ad Extensions are a powerful tool that can help enhance the performance of your campaigns. They are an easy way to get more visibility at no extra cost and help you reach your marketing goals faster.