NEW GOOGLE AD FORMATS
Google has officially announced new ad formats for AdWords.
We have recently seen Ad Sitelinks (which are working very nicely, thanks) released in Australia, and Local Business Extensions have been running for a while, but there are some new ad formats on the way as well.
Ad Sitelinks
Video ads
These look designed for the likes of 20th Century Fox to enable playing of movie trailers directly in the search results. This makes a whole lot of sense for movie releases – our “traditional” campaigns would run across search, the content network and YouTube to get users to play the trailer. Doing this in the search results directly should massively improve efficiencies.
New Google Video Ad format
Product Search Ads
Available for US advertisers, Product Search ads connect with a Google Merchant Center account to display product images/pricing in a sponsored search result.
Google Product Search ads
Comparison ads
Google is trialling comparison ads in a limited way in the USA. This is basically Google trying to encroach on the affiliate/comparison space, that could have major implications for publishers in the space. The trial is limited to mortgage advertisers, but clearly there are opportunities for comparison search in many more categories.
New comparison ads format
New ad formats have long been predicted. Once universal search brought richer natural search results to the user, clicks concentrated on the bright, shiny things on the page. By enhancing the paid search results, Google hopes to concentrate clicks on the bright, shiny paid search results.
However, all the ad formats will be subject to Quality Score/response rates which should mean that if users don’t like the ads and don’t click on them, they will weed out the formats/advertisers that don’t offer a good experience.
These new ad formats further cement the blurring lines of search and display.
