Brafton has reported that a number of paid search ad units are developing that help marketers promote relevant content – from AOL's Project Devil ads to Yahoo's ads following its alliance with Dapper. Now, search giant Google is also expanding paid search content options.
Google announced yesterday that it is offering longer headlines for select Google ads. Over the next few days, ads appearing above the organic results will have expanded headlines, with the content in the first description field moving up and being separated from the standard headline by a hyphen. Google will only add description line information to the headline when it can fit a complete sentence or idea (no fragments or disjointed phrases).
The company says it is making this move because, “We've found that the change results in higher click through rates for ads that are shown with the longer headline.” Marketers should take this as their cue that consumers want more contextual information to discern whether a link is relevant enough to merit a click.
Enhancing the information in the rich snippets of site content that appear in standard search results can be another way to demonstrate relevancy – and brands may find that investing in site content and rich snippet text is key to catching clicks. As Brafton has reported, a recent survey shows that consumers prefer organic results to paid search results.
