What is an accurate description of call out extension?

Over the past few years, Google Ads have become much more detailed. They offer advertisers new ways to attract attention and to gain traction with their audience.

In 2018, Google announced a new feature to Google Ads. 

Labeled as Callout Extensions, they enable advertisers to add more text to ads. 

This new type of ad text can spotlight a whole range of features and offers for your business, including free shipping, discounts, price matching, and more.

Callout extensions make it easier to provide potential customers with detailed information about your business, products, and services. 

These extensions show up at the top and bottom of all Google search results to provide additional context.

When you use this extension, you can edit the text in your description and see firsthand how your callout ads perform using the ad extensions tab.

Callout Extensions Vs. Sitelink Extensions

It’s essential to understand the difference between callout extensions and sitelinks extensions. 

While both callouts and sitelinks highlight areas of interest in your search ads, sitelinks extensions allow for more descriptive text and link to your website pages. 

Sitelinks will expand the size of your Google ad and allow searchers to visit a variety of landing pages directly from the ad. 

Callout extensions can be used together in the same ads as sitelink extensions. You should ideally use callout extensions to quickly highlight features and support the main ad text. You can then use sitelink extensions for diving into more specific products and services.

How To Add Google Ads Callout Extensions

Callout extensions are very well integrated into the Google Ads interface. 

Once you are in your Google Ads dashboard, go to the ad extensions tab and select the callout extension. 

From here, you can type the text, and it will begin populating in the ads.

Remember that you are limited to 25 characters for each callout, so it is crucial to make every word count. 

You must create a minimum of two callout extensions per ad or (ad group) for it to be seen in Google search results. The order and length of your callouts determine how many will appear for your ad.

Of course, it is better to create as many callouts as possible to display alongside your ads. The more callout extensions you have, the better variations Google can show to your target audience.

You can also schedule your callout extensions to show at certain times, or choose whether you want mobile users to see your callout extensions.

How to Use Text in Callout Extensions

The most effective callout text fields are shipping information, customer service hours, or a summary of extra features. You can also use short promotional codes to attract better click-throughs.

As a rule, you should provide general information about your entire business at the account campaign levels (e.g., 24/7 online ordering) and more specific information at the ad group level (e.g., 20% off cell phone cases).

Remember to keep the text short. Although the character limit is 25, a recommended size is 15 characters. This limit will enable more callouts in each of your ads. For example, use terms like ‘Free shipping’ rather than ‘we offer free shipping.’

Be specific on your offers and information. Detailed information helps customers to decide if you offer what they’re looking for. (e.g., 38 MPG mileage’ instead of ‘awesome fuel economy.’)

When it comes to creating callout extensions, there are few elements to avoid:

No duplicate text. You can’t have repetitive text in callouts at the account, ad campaign, and ad group levels. This also means you can’t use text in your callout that also appears in the main ad text. 

You can’t use symbols or emoticons in callouts. Only words and numerals and punctuation can be used.

Use sentence case rather than title case. (e.g. ‘Free shipping’ rather than ‘Free Shipping.’)

More Ad For Your Bucks

The greatest benefit of the Google callout extension is that it allows you to show valuable information underneath your ad at no extra cost.

Callout extensions are ideal for enhancing your ads and listing important offers and features without taking away from your advertisement.

Callouts are very easy to use if you’re investing in a Google Ads PPC campaign. If you are unsure of where to begin with your Google ads campaigns, our certified Google Ads team can help.

Brandastic is a digital marketing agency with offices in Orange County, Los Angeles, and Auston. Our PPC team helps businesses ignite their potential and increase revenue for their brand.  Get your FREE marketing audit to discover ways we can support and help your business innovate.

In September, Google AdWords announced a new ad extension to help advertisers stand out from the crowd and get more clicks. This new extension was dubbed the Callout Extension and it helps improve your click-through rate (CTR) immensely.

What Are Callout Extensions?

Callout extensions are small snippets of text that appear with your search ads and highlight additional features or benefits of your products/services. Up to 4 callouts can appear with your ad and each can be up to 25 characters long. Here is an example I caught doing a search:

As you can see in the second ad from State Farm, the company uses the callout extension to convey three additional messages along with their main ad.

• No underwriting required
• Local agents
• Affordable coverage

While the main ad focuses on the open enrollment period for 2015 and establishes relevance with the search query for “Idaho health insurance”, these additional snippets emphasize benefits such as affordability and local agents to enhance the offer from State Farm.

Why Should I Use Them?

For online ads on Google, you’re limited to 25 characters in your headline and 70 characters in the body of your ad. This significantly limits how much you can say. However, callout extensions allow you to effectively double the amount of messaging shown with your ad. One of my clients, a local HVAC company in Salt Lake City, has a CTR that is over two times higher when callout extensions are shown.

More messaging helps you build trust with potential customers and stand out on crowded search engine results pages. So how do you set them up?

Setting Up Callout Extensions

When you’re logging into AdWords, click on the Ad Extensions tab (circled in the picture below)

Make sure that you’re viewing Callout Extensions in the highlighted drop down box (AdWords has many types of ad extensions) and you will see if you currently have any set up. If not, just click the red “+ Extension” button to add your extensions. It will look like this:

Here is what each field is for:

• Callout text — Enter up to 25 characters of copy here.
• Device preference — You can check this if the information is relevant only to mobile search users.
• Start/end dates — For special promotions, you can set when it starts and when it should end so that you don’t have to remember to come and turn it off.
• Scheduling — You can set the extension to show only on certain days if you have daily specials or only during certain hours of the day.

Conclusion

Callout extensions are a great opportunity for the savvy advertiser to get more information in front of potential customers and get higher quality visitors to their website from AdWords. Now go get into your account and set them up!

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