Google recently spread word on the internet of their new innovation to PPC advertising being called the expanded text advert. What this advert has which is different to the norm is a title with an increased character limit of 140%, a description with an increased limit of 14% and with the URL section being auto-generated instead of manually created. With all these changes, there have been reports that the click through rates of campaigns which tried and tested the expanded adverts have seen increases of up to 20%. If this is really true, this is a huge deal and it is important to understand just why there is such a large increase in CTR. For this reason, here are some preliminary reasons as to why expanded text adverts may see a rise in CTR that will ultimately make them perform better than standard text adverts.

 

#1 More Description in the Title

The main change in the expanded text advert is the fact that there is an additional 35 characters that can be used on, not just one line but, two lines. All in all, this will definitely help adverts perform better because:

• The title is the first part of the advert for which web users look at. If there is more space in them to better describe the contents of the advert, there is more chance the web user will read enough to click onto the advert. Before, it was easy for web users to read the limited 25 character title and then scroll down the page to the next advert/organic result.
• Two lines for the title instead of one will help to break up the title to counteract it seeming too long. This will help persuade more web users to read the full longer title in expanded text adverts.

#2 A Seamless Description

Descriptions are mainly used in PPC as bullet point lists on two lines – rarely will you find advertisers using descriptions to make one long sentence for web users to read. Instead, the description is usually split up into 2-3 enticements.
By having a description that is not only a little longer but also seamless, it is encouraging advertisers to make the descriptions to adverts less disconnected and more flowing – this will, in turn, read better for web users encouraging them to both read the description and move onto the landing page of the advert – a seamless description can still contain as much information as a disconnected one with 2-3 points included inside it.
 
 

#3 A More Accurate URL

It is frustrating to say the least when you click onto an advert to go onto, what you think is, a certain URL to find that you are on a different page as to what the URL in the advert suggested. Was it a mistake? I’m not sure… Either way, it will not perform well when the URL is not related enough to the landing page.
Although these URLs are disapproved in AdWords, you will find there are some on the ‘borderline’ and get accepted.  By auto-generating URLs, Google are making sure the URL is as accurate and representable as possible of the landing page, enabling the web user to gain more trust in the advert.