Pay Per Click Advertising

Responsive Search Ads New Features

Responsive Search Ads are here to stay so make sure you're an early mover and achieve the best results possible.

What are Responsive Search Ads?

The latest offering from Google Ads, Responsive Search Ads (RSA’s) are exactly what it says on the tin; an advert that adapts to the particular customer who it is shown to. As an Adwords Agency, RSA’s are extremely exciting to us as they allow us to make our ads increasingly relevant to individual customers, and in doing so raise the chance of clicks.

So how do they work? Well, the actual setup of Responsive Search Ads couldn’t be easier. On creation, the advertiser enters multiple headlines and descriptions, each of which should target a particular target audience. The more you enter, the greater the chance your ad has of matching a potential customer’s search queries. After you’re done, Google Ads analyses the headlines and descriptions to see which are similar and combines them in ways that avoid repetition.

Now for the exciting part. Google Ads will automatically test the different combinations and work out which are performing best for you. It then adapts its algorithm over time to learn which are the most relevant to particular search queries.

Benefits over current Search Ads

Being a successful Adwords Agency is all about using the latest tools to get a leg up on the competition, and Responsive Search Ads are certainly an improvement on the expanded text ads most agencies currently utilise. There are two main ways in which RSA’s differ and improve upon what’s come before.

The first difference is the increased space allotted to each ad. While current ads can only show two headlines and one 80-character description field, RSA’s can show up to three headlines and two 90-character description fields. This means more space to grab the attention of a customer and more detail for them so they know exactly what they can expect if they click on the ad.

The second and most important difference is the added flexibility within each Responsive Search Ad. You can provide up to 15 headlines and 4 descriptions for each ad and, as mentioned previously, Google Ads will do the rest. Automatically combining them in a number of different ways depending on the search query.

The New Features

There are four new features in Responsive Ads this week alone, all of which are targeted at improving the creation experience for advertisers.

  • Staying on the theme of machine learning that RSA’s is based upon, the first new feature is suggested headlines and descriptions. These suggestions will automatically populate any empty fields in an attempt to help you come up with relevant phrases. Google has announced that this feature will initially roll out in English, but other languages will follow.
  • In a similar vein, once you have existing text ads in an ad group the Responsive Search Ads interface will import headlines and descriptions from them into any new ad you create.
  • The next feature to be added is an ad strength dial which updates in real time, just like on any good password creation tool. However, to take advantage of this feature and achieve a ‘good’ status you will have to enter well beyond the minimum headlines and descriptions.
  • The final user interface update is the ability to see an ad’s strength in the main status column. This will allow you to tell exactly how well an ad is performing; if it’s disapproved or losing impressions for example, without having to go into each ad individually.

These are all tools that can be easily utilised to make the setup of Responsive Ads a lot quicker and easier, whether you’re an Adwords agency or a small business.

Here to Stay

The most important part about these constant updates is what Google is implying by them. Responsive Search Ads are here to stay and so is Google Ads as a whole. So make sure you’re an early mover to get the most experience and achieve the best results possible.

Google Ads

For more updates on the latest from Google Ads check out our other blog posts, or to learn how they can help your business grow, contact us here.

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