With Google’s Social Networking efforts broadening, here at Anicca Digital we knew it was only a matter of time before Google integrated their own brand of social marketing into their advertising programs. Does this new Google+1 annotation give greater depths and dimensions to your advertising efforts, or create a cluttered approach that blurs the lines between work and play?
Google+ and Social Ad Extensions Overview
Google’s reasoning for adding social ad extensions can be summed up with a comment from their blog – “When making decisions, people often turn to those they trust for recommendations.”
Google have now added +1 annotations to their Google Ads (and organic results), thereby integrating social features in their ads. This means when a user is signed in to their Google account, they are able to recommend ads or websites to their friends. By clicking the +1 button, when your friends are signed into their Google account they will see that you have clicked this button highlighting the brand and website.
With social ad extensions in place, a +1 on your ad or website will also mean a +1 for your Google+ page, and vice versa, a +1 on your Google Plus page will mean an annotation on your ad. This gives the opportunity to improve the visibility of your brand and increase sales through social recommendations which have the potential to reach and influence new customers.
We’ve seen the benefits of phone and product extensions which allow customers to access your details or products quickly making your brand stand out from the crowd. So, how will +1 social ad extension impact your ads and searches?
Impact on CTR (click through rate)
As a member of the paid search team at Anicca, the first question on my mind was how this will affect the click through rate for the ads of my clients. These annotations are meant to provide the ability to attract more customers, if they do not they become unnecessary.
I believe the annotations will influence click through amongst friends, however these implications are limited to your friends and therefore give a limited circle of influence. This means the likelihood of seeing these ads is limited at this time.
If someone outside an advertiser or businesses circle of friends sees the ad, they will not see the +1 annotation.
Quality Scores
So will +1 influence quality score? As mentioned above, if these annotations improve CTR, there will be an indirect correlation between +1 and quality score. At this time many believe the future holds a more direct relationship between +1’s and quality score as Google develops the +1, however at the moment Google have not confirmed this.
Display ads
There is some similarity between text and display ads, whereby you can click +1’s to recommend brands or products to friends.
Where search and display ads are different comes from where your display ads are shown. When an individual clicks the +1 display ad (as with text ads) they will recommend this to friends. This +1 will have a significant influence on where these ads are displayed. When your friends are looking at websites where your ads may be shown, yours will have a higher chance of being shown with a +1. This process will only affect regular display ads not remarketing efforts.
Large brands and those in certain sectors may benefit more – your friends may be interested in the latest from Top Man, but not so interested in your recommendation +1 for niche sectors.
Social ad extensions are now available through the Adwords Dashboard > Ad Extensions > Social Extensions. To find out more or to see how Anicca Digital can help you with your social marketing contact us today.
By Darren Wynn
