In the UK, I have spotted an offer ad. It is appearing for desktop searches of ‘adwords’. The offer extension replaces the site links and will allegedly only appear for the number 1 ranked ad. There is additional room for explanation of the offer, up to 60 characters to explain the deal, expiry, limitations and restrictions. This is how Google can monitor relevancy.

On clicking, it goes through to a Google discounts page with the voucher which can then be saved to a Google discounts account for later use or immediately printed.

The extension probably cannot be combined with site links since it clicks through to a Google discounts landing page and presumably does not need to be the same as the ad’s destination domain URL. I wonder if Google will allow click through to advertisers own sites.

The popularity of these offer ads will be dependent on uptake and willingness to use Google discounts. Advertisers will need to host offers and discounts on the Google platform rather than promo codes and discounts on their site/other ad formats.

Last week, Google once again updated their Adwords device targeting options. From being able to target different carriers and operating systems, Google Adwords advertisers can now target specific versions of those operating systems.

For example, you may sell an app or service for Honeycomb smartphone users, the new targeting would allow you to select this specifically. The incentive is clearly apparent to attract these niche and potentially small businesses. Why is Google offering this targeting…what’s in it for them?

1. Building on their commitment to SMBs with Google Express and Places, these niche targets enable even smaller, single office run businesses to justify paid search that can be this granular.

2. Capitalising on the big business that is apps. Already pushing the click to download format, this new device targeting is crying out to app developers as a cost effective way to get their product out there.

3. Inflating mobile search numbers. Google really wants this to be the year of mobile (wasn’t that last year?). By gaining new advertisers in the growing area of selling apps, Google’s mobile search numbers and revenue will grow. In 6-9 months time, they will publicise graphs demonstrating the bite mobile search has taken out of desktop search. However the additional advertisers on mobile will have been incremental rather than switchers. This will increase Google’s Adwords users and their revenue.

It is strange….

1. That we don’t have this level of targeting detail on computers, e.g. browser or operating system (both tracked in Google Analytics)

2. That we see OS version targeting before we see handset or manufacturer targeting (available in Google Analytics)

In summary, I don’t know why Google decided to give us the ability to target operating system versions and I think this will effect a minute portion of existing Adwords advertisers but may attract a small portion of new advertisers.

N.B. Another application of this targeting could be targeting an old OS to persuade an upgrade to a newer phone.

This week’s best creative is actually a bad creative courtesy of all the advertisers down the right hand side in the screenshot. Not only do they all share the same headline but also 4 of the ads have identical copy.

Talk about a bad user journey! How can a user decide which ad to click on from these too similar ads. I think Google should have an identical ads editorial policy.

The websites are sufficiently different but someone is either running ppc campaigns for all the advertisers or there is a lot of copying going on. This could also be some kind of automation.

I often see brands protecting brand search space by using several affiliated sites or parallel microsites. This could be an example of that practice however identical ads are offputting and may mean low CTR and poor QS. When trying to dominate the landscape ad differentiation is key otherwise the user may be put off altogether!

For more than a year we have been seeing the Adwords product listing beta in US ads but these are now appearing for UK advertisers on a variety of searches.
The benefit is the image format, price and link through to landing page clearly standing out on the search results page.

However I have noted some clever use of the ad format.

On Facebook advertising, research has shown that adding borders to image thumbnails on ASUs improves CTR.

This advertiser appears to be using this piece of info and applying to Product Listing Beta.

The bright green border makes the ad significantly stand out, as colourful and bright and eye-catching. I would imagine the ad is performing well and recommend product listing ad users to do the same whilst Google allows it (I think Google will stop advertisers from taking advantage of the format in this way eventually as it probably distracts from their focus on user experience and is a bit gimmicky).

CPP (cost per phone call) bidding now allows advertisers in the UK and USA to set a separate bid where the above criteria are met (starting from a minimum bid of $1 which is the call fee). Together with the CPC bid for the ad, its quality score and the quality score of the phone call (which uses historical phone through data), CPP will be used to calculate ad rank. This represents another step in Google’s commitment to mobiles and the importance of phones in the user journey, as well as the connection between mobile and desktop searches.

This is also placing a value on using call extensions on desktop or tablet search where they can’t be directly dialled. By making them accountable (through Google call metrics) but also part of determining ad rank, advertisers now have an incentive to use this.

This will work well where the end conversion from the landing page would have been a phone call anyway, and bringing that forward into the ad and bidding high for the call will enable more conversions for advertisers who value calls. Conversely, advertisers could end up paying for clicks and calls from the one impression. Since starting max CPP costs are $1, overall costs may rise if your CPCs are typically lower than this. Furthermore, you may want to consider if missing the click through step is advantageous to the business as consumers may need some crucial information found on the landing page prior to calling.

Google are not only monetising call extensions further but also trying to turn the search engine results page into a directory listings type page and getting advertisers to pay them each time a call is referred through. This rivals the likes of Yell, if advertisers see the listings potential aspect. Advertisers need to judge if this is a useful action for their advertising goals.

The third ad above is the first I have seen with both a seller rating extension and a +1 message.
For premium position ads, the +1 message adds an additional line to ad copy. Meanwhile the seller rating extension appears next to the headline and features colourful stars which stand out.
This particular ad/landing page has a high volume of +1s however the fact it is written below the ad in grey means that the impact is lessened. It is likely a user will have decided whether or not to click prior to reaching the +1 line. This seems like Google is not yet confident enough in their social pretensions to really push +1 to the forefront of the paid search space. with this layout I do not think the +1 is contributing to Adwords performance.

What are your thoughts? Leave a comment below.

I noticed this ad using the ad preview tool in the US. It looks like the product ads which have been being beta tested for quite some time, however two images appear next to each other with their ads beside them. I wonder if this is some kind of comparison based listing where the image and price advertiser is clearly displayed. My major problem with this ad though is that it is difficult to distinguish which image belongs to which ad. If the images are clickable then this poses a problem in that a user might mistakenly click on threw wrong image, inflating advertiser costs.

Has anyone else seen this format before?

Half of this means better rank and lower cpcs for advertisers with mobile optimized sites and the other side of the coin is advertisers without mobile sites paying higher cpcs. There are many advertisers who do not have mobile friendly sites for a wide variety of reasons such as cost or lack of m commerce solution. Google is blanket penalising these advertisers. One solution is to stop advertising on mobile devices, however more and more searches ares undertaken on mobiles and this would reduce your coverage.

I think all sites need to have a mobile friendly iteration so Google’s announcement is good ammunition for getting that site finally built!

This means that advertisers can continue to bid on competitor trademarks. The one caveat was that it will be ruled infringement where the trademark is adversely affected - simply presenting yourself as a competitor will not be a problem.

This ruling is encouraging in that competition is allowed to thrive however what can be ruled as damaging to a trademark remains a grey area.

The case is not yet over for M&S as the European Court ruled local courts can deal with the issue of negative effects on trademarks so the case is being continued in the UK.

Many bloggers have noted Adwords ads which have a celebrity endorsement line below them. Google announced this as a limited advertiser beta at SMX.

This looks a little like +1 footers but adds additional clout with a celebrity name. The brand power of the celebrity is lent to the advertiser. Additionally the CTR gains are likely to be as signature as the sales gained.

One key problem for many Adwords advertisers is targeting the right audience as demographics cannot usually be differentiated at the keyword level. Celebrities are quite often keyed into specific demographic groups and so adding the right celebrity endorsement to an Adwords ad could aid teaching out to the right audience in very generic, demographic-neutral spaces.

A further question is if Google requires landing pages to contain content pertaining to the celeb endorsement.

NMA have discussed how celebs on search results pages will clutter the environment and raise questions about how users are influenced into click. The article also suggests celeb endorsements will be paid for and potentially link to +1 pages directly. This would further integrate SERPs with Googles search network. But are the celeb endorsements a step too far? It’s not that different from other media ads where celeb ambassadors abound. But by allowing them to invade the search space, Google is damaging the integrity of their search results. Celebrities are very polarising and Google may find negative results from this test.