There are lots of ad extensions out there a PPC advertiser has the option to use: to the extent that the article on PPC.org had to be split into a part 1 and a part 2 to fit all of the ad extensions of PPC in. All in all, ad extensions are a great addition to pay per click advertising. Not only can they massively improve the performance of your adverts by adding more information into the advert or enabling a conversion to be obtained more easily, most ad extensions increase the size of your search advert giving you more exposure to web users by making your advert more eye-catching. However, not all ad extensions work through the means of the advertiser choosing what he or she wants to show and it showing – there are some ad extensions for which Google chooses when to show on your search adverts. This is allowed by advertisers allowing Google to use a set of ad extensions when they feel they think it will improve the performance of your advert. However, should you allow Google this power in your campaign?

Before we go into the main pro and con of this decision, here is a list of the ad extensions Google has the power to add to your advert by allowing them to add ad extensions to your search advert:

• Consumer and seller ratings
• Dynamic call outs, site links and structured snippets
• Previous visits

They Generally Improve Conversion Rates

The vast, if not all, changes and innovations Google makes to PPC advertising has the sole objective of making the advertising platform better. By allowing Google to automatically add ad extensions has the potential to make your adverts perform better than if there were no ad extensions. This is because Google can use advanced algorithms to determine when certain ad extensions are best to put into your advert, if at all.

But, Harder to Optimise Campaigns

The main problem with allowing such versatility with Google in your campaign is that it can be harder for you to realise in your performance reports what is working and what is not working. For example, if you wanted to systematically improve every aspect of your PPC campaign through A-B testing, well, you couldn’t when enabling this feature in AdWords since it will cause ad extensions to pop up randomly (to you) making your data less useful to validate whether your small minor changed worked or not.

Ultimately, I think the best way to approach this is to do A-B testing of this feature so you can determine if it will actually make a noticeable difference to your campaign or not. My only worry with this, though, is that if you find that it does make a noticeable difference (enough to keep it on), then you will find it harder trying to optimise your campaign after.