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Responsive Search Ads Are Here - What You Should Know

Christine Hollinden : Published August 13, 2018 Updated May 16, 2025

Marketing

Responsive Search Ads Are Here - What You Should Know

Last month, Google hosted its annual Google Marketing Live event and announced several big changes, including the newly consolidated Google Marketing Platform and the newly named Google Ads. Google’s aim for these updates is to simplify their vast array of ads services, making monthly management easier for agencies, publishers, and in-house marketers.

It isn’t unusual for Google to make sweeping changes. After all, they change their search algorithm up to 600 times per year. What’s especially interesting about this year’s list of updates is the focus on ease of use and efficiency. This is particularly true for the bigger rollout of Responsive Search Ads.

What Are Responsive Search Ads?
In the spring of 2017, Google released Smart Display Ads for advertisers, and they worked like this:

An advertiser loaded several different headlines, text, and image options into the ads platform.
Google then determined the right combination of content to deliver a complete ad to a user on the Google Display Network.
Over time, Google collected user interaction data to identify the best-performing ads, optimizing for the advertiser’s desired result.

Now Google is offering the same machine learning to search ads, enabling advertisers to load one ad with a variety of different headlines and descriptions, relying on Google’s machine learning algorithm to create the perfect ad for a desirable result (i.e., clicks or conversions). With over 43,000 possible ad combinations, the days of manually A/B testing headlines are over.

Do Responsive Search Ads Provide Better Results?
Google claims that their beta tests resulted in 5-15% higher click-through rates. One of the reasons for this uplift could be the expanded nature of the ads themselves.

Responsive search ads are longer than even extended text ads, with up to three headlines instead of two and extended descriptions of two 90-character blocks, compared to just 80-characters before. With ad extensions, this means big real estate gains for your brand on the search engine results page, and consequently, more clicks.

Want to Learn More about Responsive Search Ads?
For now, Responsive Search Ads are still in beta testing and won’t become fully available for a few more months. However, there are a variety of other ad options your firm can take advantage of right now. At Hollinden, we are dedicated to helping our clients achieve their growth goals. If you are interested in learning more about incorporating Google Ads for lead generation into your marketing mix, we would love to connect.

Contact us today to start a conversation.

Take the Lead: Conducting a Competitive Analysis

Christine Hollinden : Feb 13, 2018, 5:04:21 PM

Determining what your competitors are up to—and where they’re headed—helps you better understand your position in the marketplace, which is critical...

Marketing