I was recently listening to Seth Godin give a talk at Google where he said that the internet is the first medium that wasn’t invented specifically to carry ads (unlike magazines and television). So to become successful as a company, Google had to figure out a way to make ads just as useful as their search results and that’s exactly what they did with AdWords. After some 10 years where the look and feel of the ads didn’t change much, now Google has started offering all sorts of ways to make the ads more interesting through ad extensions.
Ad extensions are a way for advertisers to enhance their text ads with additional information that the user might find interesting like a location, a phone number or additional links to a website.
Because extensions make ads bigger, they draw more attention and because they make the ads more specific, the people who click are better prequalified. And just as with AdWords in general, creating an extension is free and you only pay for clicks. (more…)