By default, PPC campaigns run in Google AdWords have automated ad extensions enabled. These are ad extensions that automatically appear, depending on a multitude of factors, to improve the performance of your search advert. The content of the ad extensions is automatically determined, based on your ad copy, landing page and other content areas to improve results.

However, should you allow this to happen by default? It’s an interesting topic to look into, allowing Google to use some of its magic to improving things for you. With this, here are some of the main pros and cons to using automated ad extensions in your PPC campaign.

Pros to Automated Ad Extensions

• Improves performance – Google uses machine learning to understand what ad extensions will work best for you and your campaign. With a time to trial test, you should see the engagement level and click through rate of your search adverts improve.
• Saves you time – A lot of time tends to be dedicated to eeking out performance in PPC campaigns. Automated ad extensions does a lot of this work for the advertiser, so they can spend more of their valuable time on other resources.
• Improves engagement – Ad extensions are effective since they expand the advert, allowing for more content and links to be filled on paid search results. The inclusion of ad extensions is a welcoming addition exactly for this reason, be it automatic or not.

Cons to Automated Ad Extensions

• Lack of control – Once you enable automated ad extensions, you have no control what ad extension shows up, when it will show up, and to whom it will show up to.
• Takes time to trial test – All machine learning eventually results in effective results at the end. However, how long does it take to reach the end point? How much budget would your campaign have used to explore the automated ad extensions to come to the conclusion of what works best? Depending on the longevity of your campaign will depend if you want to invest in trialing and running automated ad extensions, or if it is not worth the risk to the potential negative short term impact they will have.
• What happens to the conversion rate? A problem with the automated ad extensions is that they specifically look to improve the exposure level and click through rate of the search advert: not the conversion rate. In actual fact, there is no scope as to how the automated ad extensions improve the conversion rate. This is a bit worrying, as the ad extensions are auto generated based on the ad copy and landing page. Depending on Google’s algorithms will depend on what content appears in the ad extension, and whether or not it converges to the same goal/conversion.