The format has proven successful with Shopping ads, but will users swipe through text ads?
It’s already hard to tell how your text ads will render these days — two headlines or three, how many extensions, etc. Now, Google is testing a carousel of text ads on mobile.
Spotted by SEMrush, the ads carousel appears under a “People also considered” heading below the first ad. Note, this is appearing on a brand query for “xfinity” and Xfinity’s own ad does appear at the top, with a full set of extensions.
The ads in the carousel appear with two headlines a truncated description line and no ad extensions.
Why we should care. This likely looks pretty scary to a lot of advertisers thinking this could tank performance for ads that aren’t in the absolute top position — particularly with the carousel ads getting served in this truncated format. Though, f you’re Xfinity (or another brand with competing ads showing in the carousel, you might be pretty pleased). Google will be watching the impact on click volume and click-through rates with this treatment. And it’s not clear if this is also being tested on non-brand terms. The removal of average position metric makes even more sense now. – Read more
