Today, Google announced the roll out of callouts, a new ad extension in AdWords that allows advertisers to show off unique offers and benefits of their sites, products and services with an additional line of text in their ads.
Advertisers can use callouts to promote free shipping, around-the-clock customer service and price matching, as in the example above. Callouts can also promote deals, sales and other special or seasonal offers that will help make an ad stand out — and increase click-through rates.
Callouts appear below the standard ad copy and, importantly, can be displayed along with other ad formats like ratings, reviews and call extensions.
Similar to Sitelinks, Without Needing Links
There are many similarities between callouts and sitelinks. The major difference, of course, is that callouts aren’t actual links. The benefit here is that a separate landing page isn’t required. That offers a lot of flexibility in messaging and means any size site should be able to take advantage of callouts.
Like sitelinks, callouts can be set up and edited at the campaign or ad group level without having to create new ads and data is retained even after making edits. Though, one other difference from sitelinks is that callouts can also be set up at the account level.
Advertisers can customize callouts for mobile devices and schedule them by time of day and day of the week. And, also like sitelinks, the character limit for each is 25 and up to four can display.
Callouts reporting shows the number of clicks on an ad when callouts appear at the campaign, ad group and ad levels.
Getting Started
While you can set up a minimum of two callouts at each level from the Ad extensions tab, Google recommends stacking the deck and setting up four callouts at the account, campaign and ad group levels. This ensures as many callouts as possible are available to show with an ad. The most granular level callout will be shown.
Google says, “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.”
To get started, think about all the offers and services you provide that can set you apart from the competition, as well as ways callouts can augment your sitelink and broader ad format strategies.
Many advertisers will likely reevaluate their ad copy tests once callouts are up and running. If you’ve been testing unique selling propositions like “Free shipping” versus “Low price guarantee”, for example, you may find click-through rates are higher when those types of USPs are used in callouts and the extra ad copy space is used for a new call to action or more product description. There are sure to be lots of case studies coming out on this.
One other incentive to start using callouts: like other extensions and formats, they factor into Ad Rank. Callouts are rolling out into accounts over the next couple of weeks. For more, see the help center article.