Goodbye promo text, hello automated extensions. Google has announced that the rarely-viewed promotional text in Google Shopping product listing ads (PLAs) will be retired at the end of September in favor of new automated extensions.
The new extensions will dynamically highlight free shipping or price drops in PLAs by pulling from data included in advertisers’ Merchant Center settings and product feeds. Google says the testing has shown better click-through rates on ads with automated extensions than on those with promotional text.
Google has been testing several iterations of displaying pricing values in automated extensions over the past months. It’s not clear how price drop information will be displayed going forward or if there will continue to be several variations such as “Great price,” “Value Alert” and “Percent Off” messaging. I assume we’ll keep seeing tests in this area.
If you’re using promotional text now, there’s no action you need to take. Your ads will continue to show. Promotional text is the only extension going away. Merchant promotions (which show up as “Special Offer” with a little price tag icon in ads), product ratings and Trusted Stores extensions are still in the tool box.
The new extensions may not be available in all markets. Google’s help center page on PLA extensions (aka annotations) hasn’t been updated as of this posting, but it can be found here and will likely include more on country availability when updated.
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