One of the great things about Google is in its innovation. Sometimes, innovation does not always provide the desired results. Google Glass and the modular phone concept comes to mind. However, there has been a lot of innovation that has worked, with there being many examples in pay per advertising. The latest innovation from Google for PPC comes in the form of a different search advert. Here is everything you need to know about the special Black Friday advert.

What is the Black Friday advert?

Google are letting advertisers experiment with a new format of advert for the run up, and on Black Friday. The advert displays a list of deals within the snippet advert, illustrating:

• The discount the retailer has to the left of the advert
• Title
• URL
• Very short one line description

How to get on board?

As an advertiser, you can get on board this new ad format for Black Friday/Cyber Monday by:

• Adding a Black Friday or Cyber Monday promotion extension
• Create ad groups to target Black Friday or Cyber Monday

Analysis – Black Friday advert looks promising

Rich snippets are becoming more and more common on Google, simply because they address the user much better than standard search results. I look at this addition to PPC, even as just an experiment, as a paid rich snippet for Black Friday deals.

Before such an advert, only four adverts could show for paid search results. Considering how frantic Black Friday and, especially, Cyber Monday is for PPC, there simply isn’t enough spaces to accommodate all of the advertisers. The Black Friday advert allows many more advertisers to show on search results, in a more concise form.

I think it is also extremely effective way to summarize information in a format that will suit web users. At the end of the day, those using Google on Black Friday and Cyber Monday are doing so to find the best deals. If there is a way to summarize the best deals, or any deals, for that matter, then it is going to benefit the web user and their user experience of browsing online.

Saying this, there is the concern that it could be an extremely effective way for paid search results to become even more appealing over organic results. As much as advertisers want this, there needs to be a limit to how appealing paid results can be, since the internet evolves around organic results.

What will be interesting is if Google continues this advert for 2019 around the same time of year. This year marks the first year of implementing such an advert, so we can be sure all of the advertisers that do adopt the advert will have their data used to judge whether this ‘Black Friday’ advert is a good idea or not.