Following Google’s announcement of Expanded Text Ads (which was ironically and immediately shortened to ETA’s) Bing has announced that it too would be providing support for this new search ad format. Bing’s ETA’s will be the same as Google’s and will include a sixty-character title, made up of two thirty-character headlines. Below the Title will be an eighty character description line, along with a display URL comprised of two customizable paths at fifteen characters each. This is a total of 140 characters of descriptive text compared to the previous 95 character limit of the old traditional ads.
The ETA format means more advertising space to write more specific ad copy. While many SEM managers may lament the retirement of a long-honed skill for short-form creative writing (my 30-word memoir hits bookshelves this fall), we can all rejoice in the possibility for more qualified clicks. It has long-been one of the premier challenges of the SEM manager to qualify, convince, and convert people with only three lines of text (as evidenced by the unemployed SEM managers with three-line cover letters). But with these increases in character counts, we can now endeavor to reach searchers in a more personal way. We can develop a narrative in these ads and bring the searcher through a well-crafted proposal and on to a clear call-to-action.
ETA’s mean a searcher knows what they are agreeing to when they click an ad, and that means closing the gap between clicks and conversions. We are excited for the opportunity presented by Bing’s decision to support ETA’s, and we look forward to leveraging the advantage afforded by having theses ads across both Google and Bing publisher platforms. The changes are set to roll out sometime later in the fall (but hopefully will not overshadow my previously-mentioned memoir release). Check back in with us for continued updates leading to the ETA launch.
If you have always thought that your business advertising deserved more than ninety-five characters, give us a call. Let our proven team of SEM characters put character counts to use for the business you care about.