Native Gmail Ads Arrive In AdWords For All Advertisers
On the same day as unveiling their new logo, Google also announced that native Gmail ads are now available to all advertisers. Google have been testing these ads for a few years, with only a select number of advertisers having access. The ads comprises of two main parts; collapsed and expanded. The native ads are collapsed by default and expand to full-page ads when users click on them.
Google said the expanded full page ads “recreates the informational and visual richness of a landing page”.
An interesting feature of the ads is they can be treated like emails. This means that although the ads are not included in your inbox, there are options to save them in it or forward them to other people. Additionally, you can view ads without leaving your inbox. Whether you click on ads in Gmail or not this certainly creates a more seamless user experience. Users may be more inclined to open an ad knowing they won’t be taken out of their inbox.
Google maintains that users will still have control over what ads they are exposed to and can manage ad settings to remove unwanted ads from certain advertisers or opt out of interest-based advertising.
All the usual display targeting options will be available such as keywords, affinity audiences, demographics, and topics. For example, an advertiser for a sports clothing retailer could select relevant topics like “Fitness” and “Sporting Goods” or reach people in the “Health & Fitness Fanatics” or “Running Enthusiasts” affinity audiences or combine these two targeting options.
Structured Snippet Extension Rolled Out
Another tool Google introduced this week was the AdWords Structured Snippet Extension, which is a variation on the dynamic structured snippets that came out earlier this year. The latest version gives advertisers more control over what key features they wish to highlight in their ads. The snippets are fairly similar to callout extensions however, where callouts are used to emphasise what makes your business unique, Google states the structured snippets should be used to “highlight a specific aspect of the products or services you offer.”
These two features can be used simultaneously, therefore advertisers need to ensure they don’t duplicate what’s mentioned in both. For example, callout extensions should be additional information that highlights benefits to the user, such as “Free Delivery” or “Live Chat Available”. Whereas structured snippets contain header choices such as amenities or brands for advertisers to select, for example, “Nike” or “Adidas”. This new extension gives advertisers an opportunity to add any additional information that couldn’t fit in the ad text and allows a deeper insight into what is offered. This in turn creates more of an incentive for the user to click the ad.
At the present time structured snippets can only be created in English and will be rolling out to all AdWords accounts in the upcoming weeks. Ad extensions help with ad performance and are also a factor in ad rank, therefore the structure snippets should be another beneficial feature available to advertisers.
New Reporting Columns In AdWords
Hot on the heels of the news that YouTube’s TrueView video ads were being integrated into the main AdWords interface, Google has now added new reporting columns to help advertisers analyse campaign performance across channels.
The new columns are; interactions, interaction rate and average cost. They’re designed to give advertisers a more quick and efficient way to view key metrics in a single column. The total rows will also be split by campaign type rather than by network and will only appear for the campaign types in the account.
