Google has recently launched a new type of Ad extension called callouts. The callout extension allows you to place additional text in your search ad that helps to advertise your products further.
How to add call out extensions.
callout extensions can be added in a similar way to any other extension in Google Adwords. By clicking Ad extensions and view, you can now select Callout extension from the list of options
From here you can now create a new callout extension. Google has limited the text to 25 characters for each callout which gives you plenty of characters to work with for each of your extensions.
Google has stated that a minimum of 2 callout extensions must be in place for the them to show with ads, however they recommend adding the maximum of 4 as more than 2 Callouts could show based on the character length and performance of the extension.
Google allows callout extensions to be used at an account, campaign and ad group level. I would recommend where possible to use all of the listed options depending on the size of your account. Using the extensions at an account level allows you to quickly apply callout extensions to your every ad in your account that it is applicable to. These extensions however must be very general to apply to a range of campaigns. That is where campaign specific callout extensions are useful, by applying extensions at a campaign level you can be very specific with your message and ensure it is relevant to the ads that are showing. When you set a callout extension at campaign level it will automatically override any extensions at the account level, therefore you do not need to worry about having both running at the same time. Similarly ad group callout extensions will override any previously set extensions in place at higher levels.
Why use callouts?
There are a number of reasons to consider using the Google callout, the main one being that it allows you to take up more space within the Google search results. Examples of other ways in which you can use callout extensions to separate your business from others within the search results are:
- Promote any offers or promotions that you are running.
- Show your delivery options and how soon you can ship products.
- Your customer service levels and response times.
One of the benefits of using the callout extension feature is that it allows you to edit the text that appears without altering your entire ad, as such you can keep the data for the ad whilst editing the message being shown by the callout extension.
Google gives the following ad as an example of how callout extensions appear within the search results:
A final feature of the callout extension you should be aware of is the ability to schedule your ads with specific start and end dates, this allows you greater flexibility when planning your marketing efforts ahead of time. This means you can schedule offers to show over specific periods without the need for you to manually edit the text at both the start and end date of the offer.
I would recommend trying out a couple of different callouts as regardless of the size of your Adwords account they can help improve your click through rate. The extensions are simple to set up, flexible and do not affect the ad text or historic data so you have nothing to lose.
