There are four innovations previewed in total:
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Promotion extensions
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Ad variations
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Custom intent audiences
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Opportunities
The search engine says the features are in response to ‘more curious, more demanding and more impatient’ consumers and the need for advertisers to reach them in faster and easier ways via mobile devices.
Promotion Extensions
Promotion extensions give search users an easier way to hunt down special offers. The extension adds the offer below the AdWords ad, displaying the offer, code to use and promotion duration.
12 types of seasonal offer, such as Black Friday or Back-to-School can be selected to make the discount more prominent. The extension can be used to bring the ad up to date, without the advertiser being required to create totally new ad copy – this frees up time and ensures it’s easy to tap into seasonal sales periods such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Fashion brand, Torrid has reported a 30% sales lift using promotion extensions, while Shoe Carnivals says they have resulted in a 20% Return On Advertising Spend increase.
Ad variations
Performing A/B testing is critical across a range of marketing activities and the new AdWords experience will now facilitate this process for text ads too. Using the new interface, advertisers will be able to test changes to their ad copy at scale. Something as simple as adding ‘Happy holidays’ to an existing ad could generate better click throughs but, it’s a guessing game until a test is actually performed.
Using ad variations, advertisers can tweak their ad copy across thousands (or millions) of ads and then receive test results as soon as they are statistically significant.
Google reports that marketing agency, Merkle was able to use ad variations to generate a 13% increase in clicks and a 14% increase in conversions for a client.
Custom Intent Audiences
Custom Intent Audiences is now available on the Google Display Network. In Google’s official announcement post, Anthony Chavez, Director of Product Management, AdWords says, “Custom intent audiences make it easy for you to reach people who want to buy the specific products you offer based on data from your campaigns, website and YouTube channel.”
If you’re a fitness company gearing up for an influx of New Year’s Resolution orders for example, Custom Intent Audiences could be used to automatically create an audience of those searching for yoga clothing or running shoes. The system will also show reach and performance estimates to aid with campaign planning.
Opportunities
Those using the new AdWords interface will now also see an ‘Opportunities’ tab. This gives advertisers relevant recommendations and insights to action to improve account performance. Examples include suggestions for new keyword additions, improvements to targeting and suggestions for better bid and budget management.
Read Google’s announcement of new innovations in full in the official post.
