Google has announced that in a few weeks time (mid-March 2022) that we’ll see some changes to ad extensions in Google Ads.
Ad extensions are a great asset to increase an advertiser’s real estate on the search engine results page, as well as providing the searcher with some extra details that could entice them to click through on the ad and hopefully convert.
Manual and automated extensions will appear together
Later this month, if advertisers have opted in to use automated ad extensions (which allows Google to create its own extensions within your account), they could begin to appear alongside manually added ones.
To find out if you have opted in to automated extensions visit the automated extensions sections of the Extensions tab:
Then click the ‘More’ button on the far right near ‘columns’, ‘download’ etc and hit ‘Advanced settings’ and you’ll be shown which are turned on and which are turned off:
Previously, if advertisers had manually added sitelinks, callouts and structured snippets, dynamic ones would not appear as well. However, starting mid-March, this will no longer be the case and the two will be able to sit alongside each other, under the associated text ad, in the search results.
To see what and where Google has added automated extensions, visit the extensions tab and see the ‘Source’ column, this will show which extensions have been sourced by the ‘advertiser’ or ‘automatically created’. You can also opt to pause any of them if you feel they are not suitable:
Account, campaign and ad group level extensions can appear together
Another change is that more of your ad extensions will be eligible to show. Previously, when using sitelink, callout and structured snippet extensions at multiple layers within your campaigns (ie. account, campaign and ad group level) only the ones at the most granular level would be able to show. For example, ad group sitelinks would overrule any campaign and account ones for that ad group.
However, once the latest updates have been rolled out, this will no longer be the case and ad group, campaign and account level extensions will be able to show alongside one another:
So, if you are opted in to automated extensions, I’d advise regularly checking to see what extensions Google has created and is showing alongside your ads, and make sure you pause any that are not right. Similarly revisit all sitelink, callout and structured snippets throughout your campaigns to check that you’re happy for them to appear alongside one another, and if not tidy them up.
To find out more about these changes see: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/11394461
