Two charming new ad extensions you’ll want to meet

Innovations / October 20, 2016

AdWords introduces its latest crop of ad extensions — and they’re magic

It’s almost a full-time job keeping up with the new advertising features and tweaks Google is rolling out on a weekly basis. Amid a slew of new additions to the Google Display Network, AdWords and Analytics, two saucy little ad extensions just caught our eye.

Affiliate location extensions

Any manufacturer who markets online knows it can be challenging to advertise alongside your vendors. Everyone wants a piece of the pie. And since you’re ultimately working together to sell the same product, it can get tricky to negotiate who gets to advertise what, where.

AdWords just announced the impending launch of its affiliate location extensions. Not only do they enable manufacturers to give a piece of the pie to their beloved vendors by driving foot traffic to nearby bricks-and-mortar retailers. This we love.

Here’s how they work:

1. The affiliate location extension appears below your search ad, as a little CTA inviting you to see retailers near you that carry the searched product.
2. Searchers who click are directed to local vendors who stock your product.
3. Everybody wins.

Message extensions

We’re also giddy about the imminent arrival of AdWords’ message extensions. These are buttons that live below your ad. They enable searchers to send an instant message to your front lines whomever fields initial questions from potential customers. By initiating a conversion from the search results page, searchers immediately move one step closer to a conversion.

Google’s rationale: since people do almost everything on their mobile devices, let’s initiate a chat that brings searchers immediately in contact with advertisers via their phones. Given that a lot of advertisers have serious website usability issues, we like how many ad extensions simply route searchers directly to the conversion instead of taking them down a potential rabbit hole.

To make message extensions work, searchers must be using a phone with text message capabilities, and advertisers must have a phone number that is capable of sending and receiving text messages. That shouldn’t be too difficult.

AdWords has touted these extensions as being particularly relevant to hospitality and service-based companies. By eliminating a click, message extensions put searchers immediately in touch with an advertiser to book an appointment or make a reservation.

An extension (or two) for every business model

We’re the first to admit that AdWords has rolled out an awful lot of extensions in the past couple years. Some will apply to what you’re doing online (or offline). Others, not so much. It’s worth your time to read up on the types of extensions available, to learn which ones will add value to your campaigns. Use extensions that shorten a searcher’s path to purchase; especially on mobile, the less times they have to click, the closer they are to becoming your customer.