Google announced last week the rollout of callout extensions. More real estate on the SERP for everyone! Your PPC dreams have come true…well maybe not entirely because we still can’t segment tablets, but still, this feature is pretty sweet and a nice addition to the ad extension family. But, do they work? We have been running callout extensions in beta for a few eCommerce accounts over the last few months. Below we will review performance and help you determine if callout extensions are right for your account.
What Are Callout Extensions
Callout extensions are additional text that shows with your Google search ads, highlighting specific information about your products and services. Callout extensions will show up in addition to sitelinks, call extensions and review extensions. Why is this feature so great? Not only do callouts allow more space to educate users on how awesome your product or service is, they also are a factor in determining ad rank – better click through rate = better quality score = better ad rank. If you didn’t catch Jacob’s article last week on the release you can find that here and learn about callout extensions in more detail.
Where to Find Callout Extensions
Callout extensions can be found on the ad extensions tab. In the release post on September 3rd, 2014 Google states “Callouts will start rolling out today, with full availability to all advertisers in the next few weeks.” We haven’t seen this feature show up as of yet in most of the accounts that weren’t already opted in through the beta. However, it sounds like they should start showing up within the next few weeks. Below is where you will be able to locate them in your account. For detailed walk through of how to set them up click here.
What to Callout
AdWords allows 25 characters for each callout. You are allowed a maximum of 4 callout extensions for each ad, but can add more for rotation purposes. Callout extensions can be set at the account, campaign or ad group level. The more granular you get, the more detail you may want to callout for your extensions. For example, if you are setting up callout extensions for a generic campaign named “Used Books,” you may want to add “20% off all used books.” For ad group callout extensions, you may want to get more specific “G.O.T. Box Set 20% Off.” If your campaign is running on mobile you can also create mobile specific callouts to help increase engagement. “Free Shipping,” “Call for 24/7 Support” or any other feature that might help a user to convert are other options that could be used in mobile callout extensions.
Callout Performance Overview
So you get it. You know what callout extensions are, where to find them, and what to callout, but do they work? Below is an overview of performance for the last 30 days in two eCommerce accounts.
Account #1 – eCommerce account over the last 30 Days, account level callout extensions. CTR 221% improvement, CVR 40% improvement.
Account #2 – eCommerce account over the last 30 Days, campaign level callout extensions – CTR 38% improvement, CVR 28% improvement.
Conclusion
As we can see from the data above, callout extensions seem to be working really well for these two eCommerce accounts. If you are looking to increase CTR, CVR and lower CPAs (who isn’t?), I would recommend testing callout extensions in your account when available. Try testing, analyzing and optimizing different messaging across account, campaign and ad group to see how they affect performance. Have you been using callout extensions in your accounts already? How have they performed for you?
Want to learn more about Ad Extensions in all their glory? Click on the links below to learn more about all types of ad extensions.
- The Hanapin team prepared Whitepapers on Ad Extensions as Jamie Newton, Communication Coordinator, presented early last month.
- Want to get an in-depth look into ad extensions? Sam Owen explained Everything You Need to Know About Ad Extensions.
- Matt Umbro, Senior Account Manager, assessed the impact of image extensions.
- Cassie Oumedian explained how you can get an edge on your competitors by using review extensions.
