Back in 2016, Google made some changes to Text Ads that, at the time, had advertisers around the globe pulling their hair out. Back then, the changes represented a major overhaul of how things were going to work moving forward, and that meant millions of people had to essentially re-learn how to generate the best performance from their ads.
Now Google is making further changes to Expanded Text Ads, adding in the new Headline 3 and Description 2 fields. But you don’t need to worry that you’re about to live through a repeat of 2016, because Google has learned from past mistakes.
Google Ads 3rd Headline
Previously, advertisers using Google Text Ads had only two headlines to play with. This often meant making hard choices between which information to include and what to leave out in order to really stand out.
The addition of Headline 3 means that advertisers now have 90 more characters to leverage. This of course is a considerable expansion of the characters available, meaning smart advertisers can now increase the impact of their ads by being more creative and conveying more information with each campaign.
Description 2
While many advertisers developed the single description line of 80 characters into a near art form, the old style Text Ads still made it difficult to impart everything necessary for a rounded product description.
With the addition of Description 2 – and both description lines expanded out to 90 characters each – you now have double the space in which to describe the benefits and features of your products. This is great for both advertisers and Google as a whole. What Google wants to do is provide a convenient, targeted and seamless user experience, with consumers able to move with ease from the initial viewing of the ad to engagement to conversion.
The New Text Fields Aren’t Mandatory
As we said above, Google has clearly learned from the mistakes of 2016, and that’s why the search engine is doing its utmost to gradually ease advertisers and businesses into the new style Expanded Text Ads.
You don’t have to use the new fields, and you can continue pushing out your old, two headline, one description ads for as long as you like. This makes it much easier for users of the new Expanded Text Ads to work out how best to make use of the increased character, description and headline fields before setting adverts live and using budget. It also means that you can test Expanded Text Ads against your existing ads and work out which performs best for your business.
You Can Mix and Match ETA and RSA
Google has a great deal of faith in its Responsive Search Ads, and they’ve made it easy to run both Expanded Text Ads and Responsive Search Ads side-by-side.
You can, if you choose to do so, use your Expanded Text Ads headlines and descriptions for Responsive Search Ads and let Google do the heavy lifting when it comes to generating ads – but there’s no insistence that you do so. The new Google approach is all about giving you options, and it’s your choice as to how you formulate your ad campaigns.
