Tag Archive for: Frederic Lardinois

You may have already noticed ads with a company’s number of Google+ followers noted at the bottom of them. This is a new feature from AdWords Enhanced Campaigns and one that you, like I did, might be wondering about. Does it really make that much of a difference how many followers you have? Does it make a consumer more likely to click on your ad? According to Google, yes.

Frederic Lardinois reports for TechCrunch that these ads with the follower count ‘annotations’ receive a 5 to 10-percent bump in CTR than regular ads. A large number of followers would likely lend a little more credibility to an ad, but those companies with thousands or millions of followers likely already have that credibility through name recognition.

And this new feature isn’t available to just anyone with an AdWords account. You’ll not only need a “significant number of followers”, but you also need “recent, high-quality posts”. The whole thing sounds a little subjective, but it may be worth putting the time in to build up your Google+ page to get the boost in CTR.

Smart phone

The full version of AdWords has included the ability to track phone calls generated from ads for two years. TechCrunch’s Frederic Lardinois reports that, beginning last week, AdWords Express, a simplified version for small businesses, included that option as well.

Call reporting is similar to reporting on clicks your ad generates. For every consumer that uses your ad to contact you, Google tracks and stores that information so you can see how effective the complete performance of your ad has been.

Google actually routes these calls through their own toll-free number, using Google Voice technology, and then forwards them on to your business. This way, they can track the calls and charge your AdWords account the same way they do for each click.

Google has hinted that they will accept bids for higher cost-per-call ads, which would get those ads higher placement, but that option has not yet been made a reality.