Google has recently announced a big change to its ad text – in fact, ads are about to become 2x bigger than before.

The new ads will give greater prominence to advertisers, with a larger headline (2 x 30 characters vs 25 previosuly) and a longer description (80 characters vs 70). As you can see in the image above, you can now enter a short description, a call to action or something eye-catching in the ad headline, that’s going to help differentiate your business from the competition.

Display URLs are also changing. The actual URL displayed will be determined by Google, after considering your landing page. An advertiser can then add 2 paths to help enhance the display URL (up to 15 characters).

Early reports indicate that Expanded Text Ads (ETAs) increase CTR by up to 20%, so it’s worth putting in the effort to get this right!

ETAs are available to all advertisers now and Google has announced that it will phase out the old, standard ad format from 31st January 2017, so there’s still time to convert your existing ads into highly effective ETAs!

For more information, take a look at this Google AdWords post.