Google+ is finding its way into every Google product, and AdWords is no exception. Starting today, AdWords advertisers can easily highlight their Google+ follower counts in their enhanced campaigns. On average, Google says, ads with these follower counts have “a 5-10% higher click-through rate” than regular ads.
The company, it seems, tested these new ads with the help of a number of major brands, including Red Bull, National Geographic and H&M. Here is what these ads look like:
To be eligible to show these annotations, businesses need to have a Google+ page with a verified URL, and the Google+ page needs to have “recent, high-quality posts and a significant number of followers, meaning 100 for most businesses.” These new social annotations are automatic for all enhanced campaigns and won’t incur any additional cost.
Showing follower counts in ads isn’t totally new, of course. Google launched its “social extensions” for AdWords last year. Those, however, have to be set up at the campaign level while this new integration into enhanced campaigns is automatic.
Enhanced In-App Ad Targeting
Enhanced campaigns, it is worth stressing, are still a pretty new feature in AdWords, and the focus here is on creating ads that businesses can run on desktop and mobile without the need to set up multiple campaigns.
With today’s release, Google is also making some general improvements to these enhanced campaigns. Specifically, it’s making it easier to target in-app ads “based on people’s context like location, time of day and device, with enhanced campaigns.”
