It’s not every day that Google releases five new ad extensions all at once, but it happened today. My colleague Cora Rothenbaecher and I hunted them down and took pictures – take a look!
The Hashtag Extension
Using the all-new hashtag extension, advertisers can complement their ads with tags that link to popular social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.
The extension allows advertisers to provide up to 50 hashtags. However, to avoid cluttering the page, only up to 30 can be displayed at a time
The Tip of the Day Extension
Ads are answers – but sometimes, you’d like to know a little more. This is what the tip of the day extension is all about:
In early tests, click-through rates remained largely unaffected, but frequent Google users scored 8% higher on general education tests.
The Extension Extension
Let’s be honest: Most extensions aren’t used because they make sense, but simply because they make the ad bigger. With this in mind, Google created the extension extension. The extension extension simply extends the ad’s dimensions and increases the font size, making it easy for an ad to stand out.
With the extension extension it’s possible to chose the extent of the extension from 10% to 100%, depending on an advertiser’s ad spend. The smallest size is available to advertisers with budgets of 100k/month. It’s unknown how much spend is required for the larger sizes, but there’s no doubt about the general idea: bigger is better.
The Sloth Extension
Experts have called this the one thing that’s been missing from AdWords. With the sloth extension, advertisers can enhance their adverts with one of these fine creatures. The applications for this feature are obviously unlimited.
Originally planned for 2014, technical difficulties delayed the introduction of this extension for years.
The GIF Extension
Google’s answer to Bing’s image extension is finally here – bigger and better: The GIF extension allows advertisers to grab the searches attention by adding an animated image below their ads.
According to early tests, the GIF extension increases click-through rates by up to 3%. An autoplay audio version is expected to follow soon.
Conclusion
Five new extensions is a lot, but early adopters are all but guaranteed to benefit from first mover advantages. Meanwhile, Google’s is already working hard on improving and optimizing these extensions. According to inside sources, the Extended Extension Extension might be ready in time for Christmas, whereas the Unicorn Extension is optimistically scheduled for summer 2018.
Personally, I hope that Google won’t release those on a weekend as well. I really don’t see why this couldn’t wait until Monday.
Martin Roettgerding is the head of SEM at SEO/SEM agency Bloofusion Germany. On Twitter he goes by the name @bloomarty, and you can find him regularly on #ppcchat.