Google has just taken PPC advertising to a new level. The following products are now offered to the paid advertiser: sitelinks, product extensions and comparison ads.
With sitelinks, up to four text links can be shown below an AdWords ad. Up to 10 sitelinks can be selected by the paid advertiser. These sitelinks are keyword-based ads that are budgeted on a CPC basis.
Sitelinks are very powerful, but can be very misleading. Mona Elesselly (http://searchengineland.com/grab-more-attention-with-googles-new-search-ads-38559) explains how they can be powerful. “Sitelinks can:
- Cut down navigation time and get searchers to popular category pages faster.
- Quickly connect visitors to timely deals and offers. Several advertisers used sitelinks to advertise deals related to Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
- Compel searchers to take a desired action with the 35 character headline description Google allows for each sitelink (take a look at the proflower.com deal example above).”
Product extensions are also great for eCommerce sites where advertisers would want to display pictures of products on the paid section of Google’s site. Product extensions are feed-based and are integrated with Google Merchant Center accounts. So, to have product extensions on your listings, you need to register for a Google Merchant Center account in addition to AdWords.
With Comparison Ads, consumers can compare multiple relevant offers and can benefit highly competitive markets like Finance. Right now in the US, comparison ads are only available for mortgage companies and soon will be rolled out to Credit Card companies for comparing different offers, like cash back and air miles.
Ms. Elessely mentioned that there are two key advantages to the new ad types. First, they bring competitor ads down the page and take up more screen space. In some cases, this comes at a steeper price. While many advertisers may be willing to pay that price, the market has to find its own level.
The second advantage is additional tracking. More data is a good thing as you can further optimize your paid search accounts. Google has brought in some new tracking metrics, such as “plusbox impressions,” “plusbox expansion rate,” “plusbox expansions,” “CTR when plusbox was expanded,” etc.
