What we have all known as ‘Ad extensions’ to date (sitelinks, callout, image etc) will soon be labelled under the ‘Assets’ umbrella in Google Ads.
Once this change has been rolled out Google Ads users will be given more visibility on how their ads will appear, with better preview options, increased ease of implementation and also better reporting.
Since the rollout of ad extensions, way back when, Google has always said how important they are to campaigns, in order to increase ad relevance and CTRs etc.
Google says that “on average, advertisers see a 20% increase in clickthrough rate when 4 sitelinks show with their Search ads, and a 10% increase in clickthrough rate when image extensions show with their mobile Search ads.”
For this very reason, Google will be bringing both assets and extensions together, for campaign creation and reporting and is therefore putting them all together and calling them all ‘assets’.
This means that now, when creating a new Search or Performance Max campaign, adding ‘assets’ (formerly ad extensions) will be a step in the process:
After entering budget and bidding details, campaign settings and keywords, you’ll then be asked to enter ads and assets and will be given a preview of what they may look like alongside your ad:
You’ll also be recommended which assets (formerly extensions) you should add to a campaign, so an eCommerce site might be advised to add price extensions and a lead generation campaign might be advised to add lead generation extensions, for example.
Assessing Asset performance data
Once set up and receiving impressions, within the new “Ads & Assets” section of Google Ads (something that I am yet to see in any of our accounts), you’ll be able to see performance for the ads’ assets (headlines and descriptions) and association (old extensions). Simply choose the Assets section of ‘Ads & assets’:
Like I say, these reports aren’t available to us yet so I haven’t been able to use them first hand, but from the Google video here it looks like you can see the impressions etc for each ad asset (headline or description). You can also see how many ads they’ve been used by, but it’s not clear if you can see conversion data:
Also the ‘Association’ table view appears to be the old extensions and which level of the account they are associated with (account, campaign etc). You can also filter by the different types (image, sitelink, lead form etc) to drill down into each:
Ad combination reporting
Within the Ads part of ‘Ads & assets’ you can see combinations of ad assets and extensions to see which are getting the most impressions:
Google does say:
“Unified reporting in the “Assets” page will roll out over the coming weeks for all campaign types that previously supported ad extensions and the updated combinations report will roll out in the next few months.”
Fingers crossed we’ll see the updates soon and can then judge how truly useful they are.
