“Maybe the best ads are just answers.” That’s Google’s motto for search ads, as described in the above video.
It is Advertising Week, and Google’s talking about their efforts in this department at the event in New York City. According to VP of Product Management Nick Fox, about a third of searches with ads show a new enhanced ad format. New formats include a mix of the visual, the local and the social.
“Not only can you find theater times for a new movie, you can watch the trailer directly in the ad,” explains Fox. “Media ads put the sight, sound and motion of video into search ads. With Product Ads, people can see an image, price and merchant name, providing a more visual shopping experience. Because this format is often so useful, people are twice as likely to click on a Product Ad as they are to click on a standard text ad in the same location, and today, hundreds of millions of products are available through Product Ads.”
“More than 20 percent of desktop searches on Google are related to location,” says Fox. “On mobile, this climbs to 40 percent. Location-aware search ads can help you find what you’re looking for more easily by putting thousands of local businesses on the map—literally. More than 270,000 of our advertisers use Location Extensions to attach a business address on at least one ad campaign, connecting more than 1.4 million locations in the U.S. via ads. And, with our mobile ad formats, not only can you call a restaurant directly from the ad, you can also find out how far away the restaurant is located and view a map with directions.”
In an interview with Bloomberg, Fox equated Google’s efforts in search ads to trying to find the online equivalent of the offline print circular. You know, those big ads you find in your Sunday newspaper (if you still get that, or at least remember it).
Google offers quick glimpses to its various search ad formats here, though Bloomberg reports that the “circular” style ads will also be available for display ads.
