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The Latest PPC Trends and Best Practices

The Latest PPC Trends and Best Practices

Traditionally, advertising has been about getting access to eyeballs.

In the digital age, advertising is more. Way more. Advertising is now about gaining access to a consumer’s intent.

That’s why pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is ingenious. PPC gives advertisers access to a consumer’s personalized, self-expressed intent via their search actions.

On the digital front, PPC — where a company pays to appear in search listings — has long been the dominant digital advertising mechanism. More and more businesses turn to it every year as a way to generate more leads, traffic, and sales. And for good reason: businesses make on average $3 for every $1.60 they spend on Google AdWords.

Cha-ching. PPC is here to stay, that’s for sure. But in order to reap the greatest benefits, it’s important to familiarize yourself with the latest trends and best practices.

Google is the dominant player in the PPC world. For that reason, today we take a look at some of their recent updates and new features and how they might impact your PPC strategy and tactics.

Whether you’ve heard a little about PPC marketing, are curious to learn more, or you already know that you want to use PPC to market your business but aren’t sure where to start, you’ve come to the right place!

Digital Advertising Trend #1: Expanded Text Ads

Adwords is Google’s text-based advertising platform. Adwords is one of the best investments you can make for your company ($3 return on a $1.60 investment, remember?).  

In 2016, Google expanded the size of text ads to be twice as big. These new Expanded Text Ads ads now include two headlines, each with up to 30 characters, and a description of up to 80 characters. You now have a total of 140 characters of ad copy space to use — a 47 percent increase over previous formats. More text means greater visibility.

Early reports show that Expanded Text Ads are seeing click-through rate increases by as much as 20 percent.

Previously, text ads were shorter and less efficient at reaching customers. Instead of the new Extended Text Ads that have two headlines of 30 characters each and an 80-character description line, there was a 25-character headline and two 35-character description lines.You also were required to manually enter any URL you like which has changed with Extended Text Ads to being automatically extracted from your final URL and you can customizable with up to two paths. For example, two destinations that your customers could be linked to up front.Such as “ Bikini sets” or “Swim suits” in the example pictured above.

Extended Text Ads are evolving and growing with the introduction of new mobile phone uses. Phones are being used for more and more activities including internet searches.This is where extended text ads come in with the advertising and marketing through website and product searches.

Here’s a summary of how Extended Text Ads now work:

  • Two headlines. This ad type has two headline fields. The second headline is attached to the first headline field and separated by a dash. On mobile, the combined headline fields may wrap to a second line to fit the screen of the device.
  • More characters. Both headlines contain 30 characters each, more than standard text ads. Double-width characters such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean allow for 15 characters.
  • Expanded description. There is now a single description line with an expanded limit of 80 characters.
  • URL customization. Instead of inputting a display URL for your ad, the URL is calculated from the landing page. Final URL and tracking URL behavior remain the same.

Digital Advertising Trend #2: Interactive advertising

Interactive advertising is the next step up in advertising. It engages the potential customer with the product virtually and gives them the first impression.The media-based marketing Ad used to promote products, services and other announcements and information targets consumers from the websites they visit as well as on smartphones and other hand-held media devices. With the growing demand to experience the products and services before customers buy, this is a great opportunity to do just that. It’s almost like a trial without actually holding the product.The easiest “hook” to pull in the potential customer and form a continual or returning visit. The interactive ads give the user a about a sixty second experience of the product or ad that you choose to use about your business.Allowing the company to build connection with consumers where they spend the most time researching products and services.

These ads can be used on:

  • Social Media
  • Pop-Ups
  • Displays
  • Videos

Digital Advertising Trend #3: Voice Search

With the increase in the use of mobile assistants and devices like Amazon Echo and Google Home, the use of voice search on your website can make customers favor your website over another.

PPC marketers will be able to pinpoint keywords that can be used to optimize future keyword searches based on the audio the user provides while searching for products. By 2019, the voice recognition market will be a $601 million industry, according to a report from Technavio. According to comscore 50 percent of all searches will be voice searches by 2020. This addition to your website can provide a more natural and convenient way to provide information to target customers and gather information.

Over the last year Google Voice search has doubled and in 2016 are up 35x over 2008 as a result of the implementation of the voice feature. More consumers are looking to verbally search for answers to save time and get answers quick.With the new knowledge of the most voice searched phrases, a business can focus their SEO on the most frequent questions about their products. That means greater opportunity for traffic and more potential customers.


At Biznet, we are PPC experts. We create and manage campaigns that produce results.  Check out our digital marketing services page to see all we can do to help you take advantage of digital advertising. Or give us a call at 248-560-9000.