Google recently released a new beta ad type for search, the responsive search ad. An advertiser supplies a variety of headlines and descriptions, which Google’s AI combines into ads based on users’ search terms. Google provides this example of responsive search ads for a women’s shoe retailer:
Experienced Google Advertiser Beats AI’s CTR by 41%
This new Google ad type intrigued me, so I tested it with three different clients in diverse industries over a number of months. It performed well, averaging a clickthrough rate (CTR) of 10.42%.
However, the CTR of my hand-crafted ads performed 41% better. That means significantly more people clicked on my manually-created ads than clicked on the machine-generated ads.
I’ll keep experimenting with responsive search ads, but they are definitely still in beta. In case you’re curious, the cost-per-click (CPC) and other metrics were similar between the two ad types.
When Should a Small Business Create a Responsive Search Ad?
If a small business advertiser is just getting started with Google Ads, selecting a responsive search ad is a good option, even though the ad type is not well-established. These ads will perform better than a novice, even if they can’t beat a Google Ads expert just yet.
However, if you’d like to see even better results, an experienced Google Advertiser is likely worth the investment.
