3 Things to Know About Google’s Ad Image Extensions
When image extensions started becoming more widely available last year, we started testing them on several of our clients. We learned some things that you should be aware of.
- Image extensions help ad performance. Last fall, we added image extensions to a personal injury lawyer and tracked the impact over a couple of months.
In month 1, the cost per conversion was 35% lower when image extensions were showing compared to the account statistics as a whole, and the conversion rate was 48% higher.
In month 2, the cost per conversion was 28% lower with image extensions and the conversion rate was 32% higher.
- Image extensions should be regularly monitored. As much as Google wants to automate Google Ads, I continually find that their automations do not compare at all to the eye and expertise of an individual. In this example, image #2 is clearly the winner as it converts at a higher rate and lower cost. However, Google is showing image #1 the most even though it has over 4x the cost per conversion compared to image #2.
- Image extensions are showing now more widely on desktop. When we first tested this last year, we found the majority of the clicks on image extensions were happening on mobile. For the personal injury lawyer, 144/148 (97%) of the clicks on the image extension were on mobile devices. However, that is no longer true. We’re seeing cases now where image extensions are actually getting more impressions on desktop than on mobile.
What have you been seeing from image extensions? Feel free to share in the comments.
Owner at Sterling Sky Inc
Joy is the owner of the Local Search Forum, LocalU, and Sterling Sky, a Local SEO agency in Canada & the USA. She has been working in the industry since 2006. She writes for publications such as Search Engine Land and enjoys speaking regularly at marketing conferences such as MozCon, LocalU, Pubcon, SearchLove and State of Search. You can find her on Twitter or volunteering as a Product Expert on the Google My Business Forum.
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Hi Joy – thanks for this. Curious as to why you would use conversion rate as your metric here? We use CTR to determine if an ad or extension is under-performing.
All I really care about is leads. Clicks are great but if they don’t lead to customers, they’re not accomplishing what we’re looking for.