Google AdWords introduced dynamic structured snippets earlier this year, and over those past few months advertisers have been seeing success utilizing the feature. This automated ad extension gives your customers a better sense of the content on your website before they click on your ad. The information that automatically appears for your ad’s snippets reflects categories of the content found on your site. Whether it is highlighting a list of hotel amenities or top clothing brands, dynamic structured snippets make your search ads more relevant while saving you time and simplifying campaign management.
Along with the time and simplicity of dynamic structured snippets, they also typically boost the average performance of an ad and are a factor in ad rank. In the table below you can see, over the past 30 days, how well ads with dynamic structured snippets have performed compared to just the text ad itself. The cost per conversion and click through rate are significantly improved.
Structured Snippet Extensions
Although advertisers have been seeing success with dynamic structured snippets, you haven’t been able to customize the information that is displayed in this format. Recently, Google started rolling out structured snippet extensions, which will be advertiser-provided structured information that shows with text ads, giving you the control over what is shown. The example below gives you an idea of what can be added and how it will look to potential customers. Note that it will be generated on desktop with an option of mobile.
From amenities to brands to product types, you will now be able to select a predefined “Header”. There are currently 12 Header options from which to choose. The available options include:
- Amenities
- Brands
- Courses
- Degree Programs
- Destinations
- Featured Hotels
- Insurance Coverage
- Neighborhoods
- Service Catalog
- Shows
- Styles
- Types
Some of these are fairly specific, but the majority are broad enough to have useful applications across may different vertices and subject fields.
After you choose a Header, you will be able to input a list of customized values that make the most sense for your business. The values are currently limited to 25 characters and you need a minimum of 3. For example, if you’re a hotel brand promoting hotel property, you can now create a structured snippet for amenities and order them according to what you want to highlight. Such as: “Amenities: Free Wi-Fi, Business Center, Fitness Club”, as shown below.
This type of extension could help people find out more about your products and services and with the added benefit that you get to control what is displayed. Additional information and data from structured snippet extensions can be pulled from the ad extensions tab once they are running in your account.
Structured snippet extensions could also improve your return on investment. The additional website information that appears with your ads can increase your ads’ relevance and click through rate. This can help you improve your return on investment by focusing on attracting clicks from visitors who are more likely to be interested in what your business is offering.
Structured Snippets With Callouts
Structure snippets and callouts have distinct attributes and benefits. They can work together in order to improve your ad relevance and give you more room to display information that will attract customers who are ready to take action. The chart below lays out the differences between the two and what you should be using each of them for.
Structured snippets can be found in some accounts now and will be rolled out to all AdWords accounts in the coming weeks. Structured snippets can only be created in English at this time, but will more than likely expand in the future.
Ad extensions typically boost the performance of an ad and are also a factor in Ad Rank. Though ad extensions aren’t always eligible to show, the more you provide, the better the auction is at selecting the best combination of extensions to improve performance.
How do you feel about this latest upgrade? Would you rather Google take care of creating dynamic structured snippets and save you the time? Or are you welcoming the addition control you have over your ad extensions with structured snippets?
