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Google AdWords Tips: Callout Extensions

October 20, 2015

Want to call attention to what makes your business great without sacrificing ad description characters or site links? Now you can!

Before callout extensions, marketers would often find makeshift ways to use site links in their PPC ads to communicate key benefits, such as “Free Shipping!” linking to a page about a shipping policy (never intended to receive clicks or sell products).

Callout extensions free up your site links to do their job and drive visitors to truly useful content.

What Google Adwords Callout Extensions Look Like

Callout Extensions

How Callout Extensions are Useful

As with all Google AdWords extensions, callout extensions let you:

  • Get an extra line of text to communicate your value.
  • Increase your CTR, thereby boosting your Quality Score and lowering your costs.

Callout extensions have many specific benefits:

  • They give you more room in your ad to mention differentiators and benefits of your company, product or service.
  • You no longer have to sacrifice your description lines to draw attention to key features.
  • Allow you to tailor callouts for optimal performance on mobile, or desktop and tablet devices.
  • Free up your site links!
    • If you were using site links to promote value statements that were never clicked, you can convert them to callout extensions and use your site links for click-throughs that lead directly to your site content.

Strategic Tips

Remember that extensions are not guaranteed to run (even in top positions), so don’t relegate essential messages to callout status.

Be sure each extension is a unique benefit: you can’t choose which will be shown (the rotation doesn’t allow for A/B testing), and you don’t want to show identical benefits with slightly different wording.

Think about the story you are telling with your callout extensions. B2B companies trying to reduce consumer clicks may choose callouts emphasizing their commercial capabilities, rather than promoting that they offer a free demo.

How Callout Extensions Work

Costs

There’s no additional cost to run callout extensions. Clicks on your ad incur normal charges.

Constraints & Recommendations

  • Each extension can be up to 25 characters.
  • Sentence case is recommended. Avoid excessive capitalization. (e.g. Free shipping vs FREE SHIPPING)
  • Your extensions should not duplicate content from your ad or other extensions.
  • The rules that apply to text ads generally apply to callouts. See more Adwords Callout advertising policies.

Google Adwords Callout Extensions View Drop-DownAdd & Disable Callouts

Create campaign-level callouts:

  1. Choose the Campaign you’d like to add the extension to.
  2. Click the Ad extensions tab.
  3. Choose Callout Extensions from the “View” drop-down menu.
    • See screenshot example to right…
  4. Next to the Callout settings link, click Edit.
  5. You’ll see all the callouts that are in your account.
  6. To use an existing callout, find the callout in the list and click “>>” button to select it.
  7. Google Adwords Callout Ad Extension Edit Window

    To create a new callout, click New button below list of existing callouts.

    • Enter callout text in window that appears.
  8. Click Save.

(Optional) Select devices to show extension: Below the ad group callout extension window you will see, “Show this extension on.”

  • Select devices where you’d like callouts in the ad group to appear. You can choose to show the callouts across All devices (this is the default setting), or specify Mobile devices only or Desktop and tablet devices only.
  • Click Save.

Create an ad group-level callout:

  1. Go to ad group you’d like to add the callout extension to, then follow steps 2-5 above.
  2. Then to…
    • use an existing callout, click the arrow next to callout you’d like to add to the ad group.
    • create a new callout, click the New button below list of existing callouts. Enter new callout text in window that appears.

Callout Extensions Disable Extensions

Disable an ad group-level callout:

  • Choose Disable callout extensions from “Use ad group callout extension” drop-down to remove ad group-level callouts and hide the campaign callouts for this ad group.
    (This means that no callouts will show callouts.)

How to Evaluate Callout Extension Performance

Callout extensions don’t get clicked, so to evaluate performance we look at how often the extension was seen, and the clickthrough rate of the ad (not the extension).

You can analyze the performance of ads that showed callouts from the Ad extensions tab. The Clicks column provides click data for your ad headline when callouts were displayed.

Steps to review your callout performance:

  1. Select a campaign with callouts. Then, click the Ad extensions tab.
  2. Choose View: Callout Extensions from the “View” drop-down menu.
  3. You’ll see a statistics table that contains data on the ad’s performance when the callout appears.
  4. Analyze the success of your callouts to see which ones are enhancing ad performance and optimize your under performers.

Take Action

  1. First, review the performance of your existing site links to identify opportunities for callouts.
  2. Follow the instructions above to create campaign and/or ad group callout extensions. Keep in mind that with only 25 characters each, sometimes careful crafting is needed to fit the specifications.
  3. Once your callout extensions are uploaded and approved, they can start to run the same day.
  4. Callout extensions not showing up? Possible reasons ad extensions aren’t displaying

At Blast, we help organizations analyze data to support their decision making. Analytics insights don’t provide value, unless you take action.

If you’re interested in tips on how to take action and improve performance in digital marketing, this is the second in the series of high impact Google AdWords Tips and other digital marketing tips that demonstrate our commitment to “Take Action!

Amy Hebdon
About the Author

Amy is Director of Paid Search at Blast Analytics & Marketing. She has over 10 years experience optimizing paid search campaigns to hit aggressive KPIs, and loves the industry's unique ability to measure the impact of creative marketing.

Amy Hebdon has written on the Blast Digital Customer Experience and Analytics Blog.

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