Expanded Text Ads Are Going Away | Google Scraps Expanded Text Ads (ETA)

Expanded text ads are going away.

Google is getting rid of the ETA ads of the expanded text ads as of June 2022. So what does that mean for us? And why is Google going to do this?

To find out more check out my video below or keep reading for the full blog.

So essentially, what it means is that we have got up until June 2022 to create expanded text ads. After that, we’re no longer be able to create expanded text ads.

But we will be able to pause or enable any existing expanded text ads that you may already have. However, it’s probably also going to be a matter of time before Google takes away that functionality, just like they did when they got rid of the traditional text ads.

So what’s going to replace the expanded text ads or the responsive search ads, which are already in place, and you can use them? So what I’m going to be doing in this blog is I’m going to first go over a technical overview of what expanded Tech are. What responsive text ads are, how you can create expanded text ads.

Now, most of the time shows you how you can mimic expanded text ads, use responsive text ads, and how you can measure the performance of your ads.

Let’s jump into an interface and see how we create expanded text ads. So what we do is we go inside the ad section here, and we click on the plus symbol here, which says create ad. And then we initially select responsive search ads.

Now, you’ll notice that on the previous screen over here. If I leave this right, when I was going to create an ad, there is no option for creating an expanded text ad. And that’s because Google is trying to get away with it.

They don’t want us to create expanded text ads anymore. So we’ve got the option of creating, creating responsive text ads. So let me jump into an ad group. Here we go and click on the plus symbol here, responsive search ads. Click this.

But what you muster here. So you can see that by default, we can only create responsive, responsive text ads. However, aware here, there’s an option to say use responsive text ads instead.

So if we click on this button, that will allow us to create an expanded text ad. And it does give us this warning to say, starting from the 30th of June 2022, you will no longer be able to create or edit expanded text ads.

You can click on the Learn More button to find out a bit more about here. Then you have the option of using expanded text ads to create an expanded text ad. And as with all expanded text ads, what you can do is you can enter your destination URL, and this is where you want to take people to; you can add three lines of x of three headlines, you can continue as always adding your path one and path two.

And you can add up to two description lines. There are a few other options here, but I won’t go through the right. So that is how you would create an expanded text ad.

Now with a sorry, what you can also do with a response to a text, expanded text ad is to see what the ad might look like over here. So if you’ve entered some information over here, like if I type in, get a free property valuation

You can see what your ad will look like here. And you can click on the Next button here to see another version of it here. So you can see that over here. This is what your ad might look like on a desktop. And over here, if you click it again, it’ll show what your ad will look like on a mobile device, right?

If I entered the description lines, obviously that would appear here too. Let me cancel that and get out of this. Now to create a responsive text ad, so what we do again, we click on here plus symbol here, select the ad group first, and then click on the plus symbol.

And then, we’ll click on responsive search adhere. And now, what we can do, we can add up to the URL of where we want to take people to and the path you want to display, which I always encourage everyone to use because giving more information to potential users, right? What you can do, you can have up to 15 headlines, right, you don’t want 50 headlines.

And again, like with expanded text ads, you can see what your ads might look like over here. Now, the way this works, and this is key here now, right? This works because Google Now, obviously, uses machine learning, and all this AI, or however they call it nowadays, right? will determine based on what the user has typed into the search query, which lines of text should be most relevant to the user. And it will Google choose the lines from the headlines from your headlines.

So out of the 15 headlines you ran, it will choose the lines it wishes to display to the users. And it will display it’ll choose which of these lines from your four headlines, it will use to again display to the end-users. And this can be in any order, really, or any combination. So you don’t have too much control over what Google displays, right, which makes analysing a little more difficult.

If you look at this section here, again, with the preview of what you can do, you can see you can even click like next and next. And you can see what certain variations of the ads might look like. This is showing you on mobile because I’ve selected the mobile icon here. And if I carry on, I can just see what variations Google might display to my potential audiences from the lines I’ve entered.

And again, what I can do is click on the mobile, and I can see what my mobile might look like and what my ads might look like on a mobile device. Now, this is where we end up with a slight problem here now because we want control, right? We don’t want Google to control everything.

But unfortunately, it’s the way things are heading right. And we want to see how can we mimic x in expanded text ads using responsive search ads. And it’s a straightforward way of doing that, right. I’ll tell you the downside of doing that, too.

So what you need to do is just get rid of your headlines here.

Just leave the four headlines at the top. Yes. So now Google will have to use these, right. But what I can also do, this is the clever part; I can pin these headlines. So I can say to Google, I want this line to be my number one line. So click on this place pin symbol here.

And I can click on this icon here. So that’s now pinned. That will always be opposition number one. And I can say this over here; I can pin this, right.

And this will be at position number two. I can select this and I can pin this out position but three.

Because you can pin three of them, the fourth one will be by default forth anyway. And likewise, you can do the same with your, your, your description lines, right. You can just get rid of two headlines and then pin this to ignore the recommended. You can pin it to position one and pin your second line to position two.

What that will enable you to do is almost simulate what an expanded text ad may look like. Right? So you’re trying to simulate the behaviour of an expanded text ad. The downside of that is that when you’re looking at the preview here, the added strength you might find Is not brilliant; write the ad strength might be a bit low. You know, you’ve got a poor ad strength.

Now, what are you going to do? You got to explain to them that, this is because Google, once you add lots of variations, it doesn’t want you to push out one single message, right? It wants, it wants to choose what’s the best experience it can hand over to end-users. So what you’re doing in this case is you’re trying to experiment, you know, it could be for some time, that what combinations work well with you, right, or work well, with your campaign or ad group.

I wouldn’t pay too much attention to this, whilst you’re working on, you know, try to understand what works and what doesn’t work. Now, what you can also do here is, you’ll see that under to measure or get some type of reporting as to how your ads are performing; reporting is limited, right? It’s, it’s like super limited at the moment, right.

So what you can do, you can click on View asset details here. Or when you click on View, asset details, you get this sort of table here, which shows you whether it’s approved and how many impressions each line was shown.

Now, you guessed it, it does not show. Does it not show how many not? It doesn’t how many clicks that you’ve got, and it only shows the impressions. It doesn’t also show for obvious reasons that how many conversions you got, you know, you can’t pull together the ad combination to say, to Google, you know what’s worked, what hasn’t worked very well.

You do have the combinations button here, which, which, which does show you which ads were served the most. Make some sort of decisions as to what combinations you want to include in your future ads. Again, it’s limited because to start seeing this data. You need at least 5000 impressions.

And those 5000 impressions need to be visible at the top of your Google’s Google Search positions. So again, it is fairly limited. Whereas before this, what you could have done is you could have just gone in and just seen which ad is performing well and which ad is not performing well. And then you could have made your decision based on that.

But now, unfortunately, you can’t. So what we do have,

However, at this level where the ads are showing, you can see which ad or total ad combination worked well. So you can see the ad strength, the ad type, several clicks, impressions, click-through rate, average CPC cost and conversions. But you don’t always get the cost or conversion by default. So what you can do, you can click on here, which is your columns.

And you can just type in the metrics that you want to see, like, for example, you know, conversions, right, so you can add it in. And once you add it in, you can scroll to the bottom and move it around to whichever position you want to move around. So like our only focus, the first thing I want to see, I can see the X right, and then you know, then you can do your optimisation like you can see that.

I like to do as well as conversions; I like to see my conversion rate, right. So I might like to click on here. So I like to see my conversion rate here.

We’re good at my conversion rate, right? So as a combination of user clicks to make sure that I’ve got enough data. So as users, so I’ve got my click so I can see. I’ve got quite a lot of data; I can see my conversion, so I could see my conversion rate as well, right? Because you might, it depends how you want to optimise this; you could see that I’ve got a lot of conversions.

Therefore, this ad combination is good. Or you can see I’ve got a higher conversion rate. So that might be a metric. Over here. I’ve got a 3.85% conversion rate.so the question Is that would this be better than having more conversions? Would that be a better strategy to use?

What you can also do, what I also recommend is when testing ads, so Google recommends having at least one Sassari have one responsive ad and maybe up to two expanded text ads. So that’s a good combination to have.

You’ve got a bit of time to play with this, right. But what I also like to do is so that you can do, click on your campaign name, and then click on settings here. And what I like to do is, scroll down the page here, click on additional settings, right, and then you see you add rotation here.

I will click on add rotation; the default option selected optimising, prefer best performing ads. Now, that’s great because you’re giving Google a lot of control again. And what I found is that sometimes, if an ad is performing well, it keeps showing those ads during a certain period, which I don’t like.

While I’m testing, I like to select this option here, saying do not optimise ads indefinitely, right? So I’ll select that right. Now, yes, Google will throw out this warning saying global warming ads will run as often as high performing ads for an indefinite period; this option is not a recommendation for most advertisers.

However, you know, I take that with a pinch of salt. Because if I’m testing a set of ads, or like them to be shown in with the impression rate to be quite equal. Then I can measure the impression rate, which I know that each ad is serving equally.

So that’s how I usually go about testing ads to see which ad is working and which ad is not working so well. Also, in terms of trying your ads, right? You can get this option here, which you can play around with. You can click on the plus symbol, right, and you can click on Add Variation.

With Add Variation, you can start testing different ads and how one ad performs against another, so it’s a perfect option. But I’m going to save that for another video. Remember, when you’re implementing these strategies of mimicking responsive text ads when I’ve shown you how to pen the headlines in the descriptions, it won’t affect your quality score; it will only affect your ad strength.

You can, you know, be rest assured that, you know, the quality score will sort of remain in place as it is.

Once you do have, once you look at the screen here, if you do have enough data, you’ll see a column here called asset performance rating. And if you do that, you’ll see a status of either pending learning, low, suitable, best or unrated.

This is what the table will look like. Right. So if it’s in pending status, it means that there’s not enough information yet. If it’s in learning, it’s still in learning mode. So Google’s got to have a bit more time before it can start giving you some sort of performance indicators.

If it’s low, it means that that particular combination is not working very well. So you might consider getting rid of that combination. And if it’s good, enhance. It’s literally that it’s good. So you need to add more of those assets to your ads. And if it’s the best, it’s the most brilliant ad that you have.

You can take advantage of it, learn from it, what’s good about this, and what we can learn from it to implement more ads. Or if it’s unrated, it probably means that it’s got insufficient data or not enough assets yet.

Remember, we’ve got up until June 2022 to take advantage of expanded text ads, which we all love so much. And you know, you can start implementing these strategies using the RSA ad, which I’ve just explained. Now. So and the thing is, you know, keep testing, keep testing, keep testing and keep testing.