What’s New in AdWords? Google’s Latest Mobile-First Strategies

Written on 31 May, 2016 by Natasha ONeill
Categories PPC

Google has announced some of the biggest changes to hit AdWords in many years, which could mean big things for your ad spend allocation.

As part of the company’s line of mobile-first initiatives, the change is a total shakeup of the AdWords formula, redesigning pay-per-click from the ground up. Announced last week, the changes are due to take effect by the end of the year and will make it easier for you to deliver ads to people on mobile devices. After all, that’s where the majority of your customers are.

Longer character limit 

First of all, Google has made it easier to pack more information into the small ad space, extending the title and description area by more than double. Instead of one headline that fits only 25 characters, advertisers will be able to enjoy a leisurely 60 characters, spread across two separate headlines. As well as this, a single 80-character description will replace the two stand-alone 35-character description lines, giving advertisers a lot more freedom on what to write.

This could be the difference between having sparse ad text, and having text filled with conversion prompts, free shipping offers and promotions. In other words, you’ll be able to promote your brand a whole lot better.

The statistics on this don’t lie. Although the changes haven’t been rolled out to all advertisers yet, early testers have reported a staggering 20% increase in click-through-rate when they use the longer text formats.

Are more of your customers on mobile? Deliver your ads directly to them

Bidding across all devices is back. Google has made it easier to separate your campaign spends to get the most power out of each device.

Back in 2013, Google announced your desktop and tablet campaigns were covered by the same spend and advertisers needed to bid on both devices together. As tablets had a much lower conversion rate than desktop computers at the time, the cost-per-acquisition skyrocketed and advertisers weren’t getting as much for their dollar.

In these campaigns, you chose your primary device – desktop or mobile – and decided how much you wanted to pay. Calculating your spending on the secondary device was a little more complicated though, as you were restricted to a proportion of what you spent on the first device. If you wanted to increase your spending here, you could only do so by increasing your limit on the first platform, risking blowing your total spend way over budget.

Now Google has made these figures more flexible, meaning you’ll be able to increase the amount you spend on each platform without one device affecting the other. Desktop and tablet spend are now independent from each other and you’re able to be a lot more flexible on the spend of your non-primary campaigns: -100% to 900%, giving you a lot more flexibility.

Thankfully, you’ll now be able to run single-device campaigns to truly tap into the platform that gives your website the best returns on investment. This change means you can truly tailor your ads to each platform, creating the perfect ad for where your audience is searching. If your analytics data shows most of your audience converts on their phones but nearly no one uses a tablet, you’ll be able to allocate your spending accordingly.

You’ll be nimbler in the face of change and will be able to quickly adjust your spend based on new data.

Native ads to make your app experience seamless

The third change is the push to native advertising inside apps themselves, allowing even app developers to unlock the marketing power of the Google Display Network. Previously, in-app advertising was limited to simple banners and text ads. Now though, your ad will be integrated seamlessly into the app’s native interface, complete with font, design and branding.

Source: Google
Google has made the process easy to advertise with responsive ads. All you, as the advertiser, have to do is write the ad copy, choose an image and landing page URL and Google will do the rest for you. They’ll make sure your new ad fits the exact device you specify, whether you want to advertise on mobile, desktop or tablet.

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