Responsive Search Ads Ad Strength Indicator & Reporting Improvements
Since Responsive Search Ads were introduced earlier in 2018, the biggest frustration from advertisers was the lack of reporting that is available. With the ad format still in beta, one thing still holding advertisers back from rolling this out across more ad groups is the fact that its difficult to determine which combinations are working best. To tackle this, Google announced two new features that should help advertisers grow their confidence in the format.
We will now see Ad Strength Indicators when creating Responsive Search Ads, and as a column in the interface. We should now also be able to get some better reporting features for top combinations too.
Measure the strength of your ad with Ad Strength Indicator
The new Ad Strength Indicator measures a combination of relevance, quantity and diversity of the ad copy in Responsive Search Ads. It will then give a score ranging from ‘Poor’ to ‘Excellent’ and combine this with actionable feedback such as ‘Add More Headlines’, or ‘Make Your Description Lines More Unique’. From here, advertisers can then click on ‘View Ideas’ to get inspiration on what more could be done to help improve the score, and then apply if needed.
This should start to pop into your accounts from the end of September as a column in Google Ads. As for when this could appear in the ad creation view for Responsive Search Ads, this should be available in the coming weeks.
Top Tip – Have at least 3 or more ads per ad group, including one Responsive Search Ad. You need to make sure that you are then utilising as many Ad Extensions as possible (at least 3), as well as having ad rotation settings set to ‘Optimize’.
Responsive Search Ads reporting improvements
There is finally some better reporting functionalities for Responsive Search Ads in the Google Ads interface.
You can now filter for Ad Type in the Ads & Extensions tab for a view of your Top Combinations.
If you click on ‘View Details’ you can then find some stats for your Assets (Headlines and Descrption Lines), as well as stats for Combinations. It will even tell you how many impressions your combinations have served in the defined timeframe.
What does this mean for you?
It’s easier for you to test Ad Copy
A few months ago, we reported that Responsive Search Ads could mean the death of traditional A/B testing where your ad rotation settings are set to ‘Do Not Optimise’ and you manually add in ad copy rotations testing messages such as ‘Buy Now’ and ‘Shop Now’ against each other. We still believe that this is the case with the introduction of the Responsive Search Ad, however it’s reporting features haven’t really allowed for this to truly happen yet. The latest announcements have gone some way to improve this, but we think that there is still some work to do before it completely replaces A/B testing methods.
Does that mean that if we get better reporting features for Responsive Search Ads, and it get’s rolled out globally, that we could see the end of ‘Do Not Optimise: Rotate Ads Indefinitely’ ad rotation settings as an option?
Yeah potentially, but I doubt it will happen any time soon. Think about it, one of the only reasons that this is still an option is because Advertisers still like to have control over their ad testing. It’s deemed a fairer way to split test ad copy as Google will randomly place an ad from the ad group throughout the day. But the introduction of Responsive Search Ads is kind of a happy medium between having control, and not enough control. However, there’s still a lack of transparency around the machine learning and automation behind this which will always bring with it a healthy dose of scepticism from most advertisers. If the ‘Do Not Optimise’ ad rotation setting was eventually removed, advertisers won’t let it go lightly.
Do the better reporting functionality mean that you could be running out of excuses to not test Responsive Search Ads?
Yeah, but I still think that the reporting features still need some improvements which i’m assuming will improve (further to this weeks announcements) if this fully rolls out to all advertisers in the future.
At the very least, you should be utilising the Ad Strength Indicator features to ensure your ads are working as hard as possible. In theory if your Headlines/Description Lines are more unique your relevance improves which improves your Click Through Rate which then improves your Quality Score, CPCs and performance.
Responsive Search Ads FAQ
What is a responsive search ad?
Responsive Search Ads let you create an ad in Google Ads that adapts to find the best combination for your objective. If you enter multiple headlines and descriptions when creating the ad, then over time Google will test different variations and combinations to find out which one works best.
Are responsive search ads good?
Defining whether responsive search ads are good for your campaigns is difficult without knowing your objectives. Due to the limited reporting available for responsive search ads, this has reduced trust in the format. However, any tool that enables you to optimise towards lot of different combinations of assets to find one that delivers the biggest CTR can only be a good thing.
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