Ad Assets

Google Ads uses Assets (formerly known as extensions or formats) to allow advertisers to enhance their ads with additional information on the product, service, or business.  There are three assets that should always be included in every ad group: Sitelink Assets, Callout Assets, and Call Assets. Structured Snippet Assets should added as well where applicable.

Along with increasing the chance an ad will get clicked, including assets also increases the ad rank of an ad. This means that Google will be more likely to show the ad at a higher average spot and/or at a lower cost per click. It is important to remember when creating list-based assets that Google determines the order in which the assets are shown.

Callout Assets

Callout Assets provide additional information about the product/service you are advertising. Unlike sitelinks, callouts are not clickable.  In general, think of callouts as “calling out” benefits or features of the product/service (i.e. free consultations, lifetime warranty, price matching). These benefits or features are in addition to what’s already in the ad. It is a best practice to create at least 4 callouts.

Lead Form Assets

Lead Form Assets are useful because they allow people to submit their information in a form without having to actually visit the website. Their main benefit is that they allow you to get high-quality leads while providing a seamless experience for your customers. People can click on the lead form asset directly in the SERP, let their information auto-populate (if they are signed in to their browser), and click submit. It lowers the barrier of entry and makes it easier for customers to go through with submitting a form.

 

While there are some positives to Lead Form Assets, the barrier to entry for the client is so high that we typically don’t use them. If the client doesn’t have a CRM, all submitted forms must be downloaded to a spreadsheet to be viewed. Seeing as how time is of the essence when you receive a lead (and you want to respond as quickly as possible), constantly downloaded CSVs to see if you have gotten any leads is unrealistic. If the client has a CRM, a webhook integration (such as Zapier) can be utilized to push leads directly into the client’s CRM, which is a much better solution. However, many of our clients don’t have CRMs, which makes this impossible.

Structured Snippet Assets

Similar to callout assets, structured snippet assets are specific aspects of your products and services that you want displayed on your ad. The difference, however, is that structured snippet assets are grouped into a category and displayed as supporting values to the categorical header. Structured snippets should provide a complete group of products or services that your business provides. 

Here is a list of available headers:

• Amenities
• Brands
• Courses
• Degree programs
• Destinations
• Featured hotels
• Insurance coverage
• Models
• Neighborhoods
• Service catalog
• Shows
• Styles
• Types

Examples: “Wifi” is an amenity. “Costa Rica” is a destination. “Downtown” is a neighborhood. 

Best practices:

• Include 4 values per header.
• Add more than one header-value set. This gives Google more options to display.

Business Name Assets

A business name asset appears next to your business logo in an ad and it is just what it sounds like— the name of your business. The business name asset is good to have in all accounts where it is available.

In some accounts, the client may have previously set up their Google Ads account, but used the wrong verified advertiser name or that name is not close enough to the name of their business. In these cases, Google will disapprove the business name if you try and add something too different. There may be some work-arounds to this, but they are almost never that necessary.

Best practices:

• Either the account or each campaign has a business name (preferably at the account level)

Business Logo Assets

Business logos are good to have in every Google Ads account. They show up as the icon next to your ad. Google does not guarantee that it will show your logo once uploaded if it does not meet quality standards and will instead use a placeholder logo. 

There are certain specifications to make sure your logo is approved:

• There cannot be too much text in the logo
• The logo cannot be blurry
• It must be square shaped
• It must not violate any of Google’s other policies

Best practices:

• Make sure the account level or each campaign has a logo, if possible (preferably account level).
• Use an AI, photoshop, or crop the logo, if allowed, to remove texts from the logo to help it get approved.

Headline Assets

Headline assets are headlines that you can add to your campaigns or your account, but they are slightly different than headlines you find directly in ad creation. You are able to add headlines to different campaigns and you are even able to schedule these headlines. So, if you have a client that needs certain headlines showing at certain times, such as for a promotion, this might be a good option to look at rather than going in and manually editing the headlines once the time period is up.

Most of the time, headline assets are not something that we usually need to deal with since they don’t move the needle very much if the rest of your ads and assets are optimized. Usually, we will edit headlines in the ads themselves.

Best practices:

• Do most headline-related things in the ads themselves.
• If you choose to create headlines here, make sure they include an end date if they are for promotions or something similar.

Description Assets

Description assets work the same as headlines assets, but they are descriptions instead. This means that they are capped at 90 characters.

Like headlines, you should really only use them in scenarios where you have a promotion where you want to use the scheduling features.

Best practices:

• Do most description-related things in the ads themselves.
• If you choose to create descriptions here, make sure they include an end date if they are for promotions.

Location Assets

To set up location assets in Google Ads, link your Google Business Profile if you have one so Google Ads can access your business locations. After connecting the account, choose which locations or location groups you want to use. Once applied to your campaigns, Google can show your business address, map location, and directions directly in your ads when relevant. Refer to the video for more information on how to set up a location asset or an affiliate location (locations that sell your products or services but you do not own them).

Best practice:

• Add locations for businesses who want to increase foot-traffic sales.

Price Assets

Price assets allow you to assign values to what you are selling so people can see it directly in the ad. Price assets are the only assets that don’t necessarily increase clicks to an ad, but decreases clicks, but these clicks are from people that are more willing to buy what your business has to sell for the price it is set at. To create a price asset, you must enter in all the specifications for your price, including type, currency, a price qualifier (if applicable), header, URL, description, and the unit (if the pricing is per hour, day, year, etc).

Best practices:

• Only make a price asset if it is approved by the MC
• Add if you want to further qualify who is clicking on the ad

Promotion Assets

Promotion assets let you give discounts to customers clicking on your ads. There is an option to add already existing promotion assets to the account or different campaigns, but many times you will be making one from scratch. To set up a promotion asset, you will need to choose an occasion, currency, promotion type, amount, the item, final url, and promotional details, and start/end dates. Most of this is self-explanatory, but you should know these different types of promotion types and details.

Here is a list of available promotion types:

• Monetary discount
• Percent discount
• Up to monetary discount
• Up to percent discount

Here’s a list of available promotion details:

• None
• On orders over
• Promo code (Alphanumeric)
• Promo code (Barcode)
• Promo code (QR code)

Best practices:

• Only set up a promotion when an MC gives you a task asking you to do so.
• Fill out all applicable fields.
• Set an end date for the promotion so it doesn’t go on forever by accident.