Google has announced a raft of AdWords and Analytics changes at its annual Performance Summit, including the arrival of extended text ads, bidding support and promoted pins for Google Maps. The focus is again on smartphones, as Google continues to look at new ways to help marketers succeed in a “mobile-first world.”

Google revealed that there are now trillions of searches being made every year, and the majority of them are now happening on mobile. In order to help publishers optimise their campaigns, Google will be rolling out expanded text ads in AdWords later this year so that they can use more space to showcase relevant information about products and services.

New ad format

This means that advertisers will be able to include more prominent headlines, a longer description line and a more effective display URL. Currently, users have to manually enter the display URL, which can cause a mismatch with the final and landing page URLs. The new upgraded ad component will feature an automatically extracted domain from the final URL for greater accuracy.

Google claims that advertisers have already reported a 20 per cent increase in click-through rates compared to the current ad system in early testing. Google will also introduce responsive ads for display, which will boost engagement by adapting to the look and feel of content that users are browsing. To take advantage of this feature, publishers will only have to provide a URL, headlines, an image and a description.

There will be changes to how bids are made as well. “Marketers need more control and flexibility to optimise bids on specific devices,” Google said in an official AdWords blog post. “In the next few months, you’ll be able to set individual bid adjustments for each device type – mobile, desktop and tablet. This lets you anchor your base keyword bid to the device most valuable to your business and then set bid adjustments for each of the other devices.”

Promoted pins

Finally, Google has revealed that ads are about to become more prominent in Google Maps via “promoted pins.” This means that brand logos will appear on maps, and other useful information such as discount codes and local store inventories will appear on the business page when tapped.