This article is a contribution from the Search Engine Land mentorship program PPC mentee Luna Rocha. You can read more about the mentorship program and the partnerships for the 2021 cohort here.
Luna Rocha is a Targeted Display Specialist at Gatorworks, a full-service digital marketing agency based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She brings five years of experience in strategic search campaign implementation and optimization with a keen focus on ROAS.
If you keep up with search industry news, you may have heard that Google is soon phasing out the tried-and-true expanded text ads (ETAs) that have widely been the standard in search. With this move, Google is following the industry-wide trend towards automation. ETAs and their forerunners, Standard Text ads, have been the default since Google Ads launched. This upcoming change is a step in a brand-new direction.
Responsive search ads will be the new default for search ads. Savvy advertisers may have foreseen this update: ETAs have been noticeably absent from the “create ad” dropdown for some time now:
What exactly does this mean for search marketers and what can you do to prepare your accounts?
When does this change take effect?
Come July 2022, you won’t be able to create or edit new expanded text ads in Google Ads. However, any ETAs currently running in your account will remain unchanged. If you’re like me, you’ve always had ETAs running alongside responsive search ads (RSAs) as a means to A/B test and optimize your ad groups. So, Google is throwing a curveball with this update.
A/B Testing for RSAs
Inevitably, introducing automation into search ads comes at the cost of having a control in an experiment. This can complicate the process of A/B testing. However, the added machine learning element that RSAs bring to the table offer their own built-in form of A/B testing.
Let’s say I want to run cost-based vs. USP-based copy to find out which resonates best with our target audience. Previously, if I wanted to run two distinct styles of ad copy against each other, I’d implement each version as a separate ETA. Since RSAs offer so many headlines, you can still A/B test by running different variations within one ad. Google’s algorithm automatically serves the ads that perform best more often, so after a period of testing, you can analyze which style of copy resonated.
How to prepare your ad accounts
I will be the first to admit, when I heard that Google Ads was sunsetting ETAs, I panicked a little. I had gotten used to an ETA-first approach over the years. All of our processes, from keyword research to submitting search ads for client approval, were centered on expanded text ads.