AdWords Introduces New Promotion Extensions, Custom Intent Audiences and Ad Variations for Testing

Three new features are available in the new AdWords interface.

Promotion Extensions

About a year ago, Google started testing promotion extensions in text ads, and earlier this year they extended this feature to the new AdWords interface. Now, Google has extended its arms even further by making promotion extensions available globally, in all AdWords supported languages and currencies. Promotion extensions give advertisers the opportunity to display specific offers in their text ads, without having to create new ads. Examples of offers include discounts, promotion codes and a set offer period.

Custom Intent Audiences

Advertisers can now find ‘custom intent audiences’ on the Google Display Network. According to Anthony Chavez, the director of product management for AdWords, this feature will allow advertisers to target “people who want to buy the specific products you offer — based on data from your campaigns, website and YouTube channel.”

In a recent phone interview with Search Engine Land, Chavez explained that there are two flavours of custom intent audiences. With the first flavour, advertisers can create their own custom intent audience based on topics their target audience are likely to be interested in, and URLs they visit.

The second flavour is machine-learning based and automated. Google will create an audience based on the campaign while inferring characteristics of target consumers. The auto-generated custom intent audience lists will be shown to advertisers in the Audience Centre as an auto-created audience. Google will show reach and performance estimates for all audience groups.

Ad Variations

In the new UI, advertisers can find an Ad Variations tab, along with Campaign Drafts and Campaign Experiments, which presents a new way to test ad variations. Ad variations can be used to test headlines, display paths, descriptions and much more. Advertisers can test this across thousands of ads quickly and easily, and Google will show the results of the test once they are statistically significant.