In early September, Google announced the roll out of Callouts, a new ad extension in AdWords. Callouts allow advertisers to show unique offers and benefits with an additional line of text in their ads. Unlike Sitelink Extensions, Callouts aren’t actual links, but rather benefit statements that don’t require a separate landing page.
Like Sitelink Extensions, Callouts can be edited at the campaign or Ad group level. Here’s an example of how they appear in Google search results:
Callout Extensions have already been discussed across the web, including from Google AdWords official blog here. However, one important factor to mention is that callouts don’t show everytime your ad shows.
According to Google, “The order of your callouts, their length, and how they perform factor into how many callouts appear, and whether a callout will show for your ad.” From my experience, I’ve only seen callouts in the top 2 positions on Google results, and not once in ads on the Google search sidebar. While this could change, it certainly emphasizes the importance of Ad Rank.
As we know, Ad Extensions are a major influencer in Ad Rank, along with Quality Score and max CPC bid. Put simply: the better the Ad Rank, the more likely ad extensions (and in this case Callout extensions) are likely to appear.
Callout Extension Results
As soon as Callout extensions were rolled out I began testing them with nearly all of my Adwords clients. My hypothesis was simple: Adding additional benefit statements underneath ad copy would allow more freedom to test the ad copy itself.
Now I could allow callout extensions to handle the catchy benefits/phrases I normally used in ads, like “Onsite Help Available,” “Lifetime Career Services” or “Free Shipping.” Instead, I could focus on copy that pertained specifically to the Ad group itself, thus helping improve my Quality Score.
Clearly you can see how callout extensions have had a positive ripple effect across nearly all my accounts. Now that Callout extensions have been running for 1 month, I can happily report that my hypothesis has proven true! Here’s an example (confidential keyword data removed) of one account that ran in August:
As you can see, I was struggling to hit the unwriten rule of a 1% or better CTR. Check out the same account in September, after nearly 1 full month of callout extensions:
When the callout extension was running (i.e. the ad ranked in the top 1-2 spots), the click-through-rate improved by over 300%! This drastically improved over all CTR for the account by nearly 50%.
I waited to write this post until I had some results to share with you, and in doing so I hope I’ve convinced you to try the latest and greatest from the AdWords team.
