In September of 2014, Google introduced call-out extensions to make it easier to highlight key information about your product or service in order to help your ads stand out.
This includes things like free shipping, a price match guarantee, or anything else that makes your product or service special, as evidenced in the screenshot seen below.
As soon as call-out extensions were announced we began experimenting with them here at iSpionage and have gotten some pretty good results.
In this post, we’re going to explain why ad extensions are so effective, how we’ve used them to get better results, and how you can implement them to boost your own campaigns. We’ll also mention one of the mistakes we made that taught us a valuable lesson along the way.
Why They’re So Effective
The primary reason call-out extensions are so effective and so valuable is that they allow you to extend your ad copy more than the 95 characters normally allowed by Google’s 25-character title and 70-character body content limit for ads. With so few characters allowed in the first place, any additional phrases you can add to boost your copy is a bonus and presents a huge opportunity.
Another benefit is that your ad will take up more space and thereby attract more attention by using call-out extensions. The extra line of content means your ad will be taking up slightly more space which means it has that much more opportunity to attract attention as seen in the screenshot below.
As we all know, AdWords advertising is highly competitive which means every extra pixel and character can add makes a difference in the effectiveness of your ad and campaign.
How We’ve Used Call-Out Extensions
As mentioned, we’ve used call-out extensions to get better results here at iSpionage. With April as an example, our ads using call-out extensions have nearly double the conversion rate of our ads without any call-outs and more than double the click-through rate.
We’ve been quite pleased with these results but do need to mention that there are other factors involved.
Call-out extensions only show up when an ad is shown at the top or below search results which means the click-through rates will likely be higher for these ads even without the extensions.
There’s no way to know exactly how much of an impact that extensions have, but with the benefit of taking up extra space in the SERPs along with the great results evidenced in the screenshot above, we’re willing to give call-outs the benefit of the doubt as a valuable addition to our PPC campaign.
Our One Mistake
The one mistake we made was to add a call-out extension that actually decreased performance. We tested “Only $59/month” as a call-out, and it had nearly half the CTR of the ads with the other call-outs and only a .40% conversion rate.
The idea behind this call-out was the thought that showing our lowest price point would generate clicks from people with a high-buying intent which in turn would boost conversions. Since that proved not to be the case, we’ve since removed “Only $59/month” from our call-out extension arsenal.
How to Add Call-Out Extensions to Your Campaign
To add call-out extensions to your campaign, first click on a campaign, and then click on an ad group.
After clicking on an ad group, find the tab for “Ad Extensions,” and then click.
Now that you’re in the ad extension section, click the drop-down for viewing extensions and then select “Callout extensions.”
Next, click on the red “Extension” button, and then click to add a “New Callout.”
At this point, you can add any and all call-outs to extend the length of your ad and to make it more appealing to searchers. Here are a few examples to provide a little more inspiration.
Are you ready to begin taking advantage of AdWords call-out extensions? Go ahead and log into your campaign now to add some call-outs and to start taking advantage of this great new feature that’s been proven to boost performance for Google AdWords campaigns.
Author
Joe Putnam is the blog editor at iSpionage. You can get in touch with him on Twitter at @josephputnam to talk about PPC and on Clarity to get advice about content marketing.
