Anyone who keeps tabs on Google-related news will be aware that the company has been not so subtlety testing ads at the bottom of it’s SERPS for some time now, and this week, Google officially announced it’s plans to implement the changes permanently.
The initial worry for advertisers is that Google will stop serving ads to the side of search results, in turn jeopardising click through rates and all that comes with it – Google said in it’s announcement that ads that have previously shown to the side of the results may in some cases appear below them.
This may sound ominous, but according to Jerry Dischler, Director, Search Ads Product Management at Google, this change could be for the better. He blogged, “In many cases, we have found that displaying ads below search results fits better into the user’s flow as they scan the page from top to bottom. On average, this placement performed better than side ads in terms of click-through rate in our tests.”
It’s also worth raising the point that ads served on the bottom of the page could allow more marketers to get a piece of the first page pie, essentially pulling in ads from would-be page two positions.
In regards to Adwords reporting, bottom-of-the-page-ads will be put in the ‘Top vs. Side’ segment. With this launch, all side, bottom and experiment impressions will now be classified as “Other” so you can more easily see how your top ad placements perform against placements on the rest of the page.
To read more about ad positions, check out adwords.google.com/support.
