Ad Extensions are extra snippets of relevant information about your business that can be added to your Google Ads text ads. These can include your business location, phone number, business ratings, and more. There are two categories of Ad Extensions: Automatic and Manual Ad Extensions. In a time where everyone is having to be more and more creative to gain a user’s attention, ad extensions are still a useful and very necessary tool.
Competitive Edge
The honest truth is that the battle for ad prominence is a big game of one-upping your competition. When competing in the SERPs it’s important to do everything you can to stand out. The beautiful thing about adding these extensions to your ads is that it makes your overall ad bigger. This relates back to a pretty simple concept in adverting and marketing: the bigger the ad, the bigger the exposure. This is a theory that the print advertising industry lives by.
If your competitor has ad copy that offers users a 25% discount and you’re only offering 10%, guess who’s getting that click? Now that isn’t to say that you should spend hours trying to figure out your competitor’s offerings, but that does mean you should do what you can to be more competitive. incorporating ad extensions into your campaigns provides you with more free exposure than a competitor who doesn’t have them. By pushing your competitor out of the space, users can’t even be detoured by that 25% off offer.
Google Likes It
Using ad extensions on your ads makes Google very happy. Why? This proves to Google that you care about showing the most relevant engaging content possible for its users. Period! That’s what Google strives for with its search engine and if they can weed out advertisers who are pushing irrelevant content they will.
Adds More Information + FREE
There’s no cost to add extensions to your campaign. I’ll say that again, there is no cost to add extensions to your campaign. So why wouldn’t you just do it (not a Nike reference)? Not only are you making Google happy and staying competitive, but you get to do it for free. One other very obvious benefit is the opportunity to share more information about your business in your ad. Google Ads has recently expanded its ‘Expanded text ad’ copy requirements to include an additional headline and description line, but why not take the opportunity to say more? You can tell users what’s in stock, how to find you, and even provide links to relevant popular blogs on your website. It’s important to note that ad extensions don’t always show, so be sure to keep the most important information in your text ad.
Take this Nike ad for instance. Everything highlighted in yellow is an ad extension. Without those additional pieces of content, it might look pretty boring and not very engaging.
Ad Extensions Improve Your CTR
Everyone is looking for a quick fix to improve CTR and there are ones out there. But nothing is quicker or more cost-effective than adding ad extensions to your campaign. Ad extensions ensure a higher click-through rate (CTR) because they make your ad more prominent (see benefit #1).
Some ad extensions that help increase CTR tenfold are below:
- Price extensions
- Location extensions
- Call extensions
- Sitelink extensions
- Structured snippet extensions