Overview

On February 3, 2011 Google announced a new Ad format nicknamed ‘Extended Headlines.’ Google has found that the new format “results in higher click-through rates for ads that are shown with the longer headline, as well as other top ads that appear beside them.”  To generate the new format Google takes the first line of the ad copy, appends it to headline and inserts a hyphen as a separator.  The extended headlines will only appear when the ad is positioned in the most prominent ad space at the top of the search results page.

At this time, advertisers do not have the ability to control when their ads appear with an extended headline.  Google recommends using a distinct statement with proper punctuation in the first line of your ad copy to increase the likelihood of the ad being displayed with an extended headline.  The screen shots below provide an example of the original ad format and the new extended headline ad format.

Original Format:

New Format:

Case Study

Sabre Hospitality Solutions has begun deploying extended headline optimization across several campaigns in an effort to validate Google’s claim of increased click through rates. To ensure the accuracy of our tests, we began by creating multiple Ad Groups for each property. Each Ad Group was then given two ad copy variations with similar brand messaging, but one had been specifically optimized for extended headlines. At the end of the test we found that the ad with the extended headline was 0.25% more likely to receive a click than the ad with the original format.

Recommended Strategy

We have found this feature to be most impactful with campaigns that are not promoting a special offer. This is due to the fact that general branding ads allow for more flexibility in the structure of the ad text. Ads developed for packages and special offers generally require more words which makes optimizing Ads for extended headlines more difficult.

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