In this Ad Extension Series, we have covered a wide variety of extensions available for your advertising campaigns. Each of these extensions extend your ad, provide more information for the potential client, and/or make it easier for them to connect with you directly from your online ads. Message extensions are useful for the same reasons. Message extensions allow people to click a button on your ad, similar to the click-to-call button, and then immediately contact your business. Like with the click-to-call button, their phone will automatically go to their texting app and open a new text to the phone number you set to receive the texts. You have the ability to create a message for someone to send you when they click on that button, which will auto fill in the text box when the app opens. Users can also draft their own text before sending if they want to customize their message. When someone does click on the message extension, it is charged like a normal click to your ad.

A message extension can be highly beneficial to an ad in today’s mobile search heavy environment. However, there are a few limitations to keep in mind when considering the application of message extensions. In order to use a message extension, the business phone number you provide for the campaign will need to be able to send and receive text messages. Furthermore, the message extension will only appear on text-friendly mobile devices and there is no guarantee that the message extension will appear to those devices every time. Just like with the other extensions, message extensions will only appear when the right set of circumstances come together on a qualifying ad.

AdWords has also recently announced that more detailed message extension reporting is available in the new AdWords experience, which could make using message extensions even more beneficial to your business. The most important metric you can now see is the total number of messages in a single texting conversation that resulted from someone using a message extension on one of your ads. This will make it easier to analyze which message extension clicks resulted in a longer interaction. Another important metric that was recently added is a messaging specific version of a CTR called Chat Rate. The chat rate is the percentage of people that saw your message extension and then actually text you. You can also now see Chat Start Time, which is the time someone sent you a message. All of these metrics could help provide you valuable insight into how your ads are performing and what you might want to do to optimize your campaign.

As always, creating and optimizing an advertising campaign takes a lot of time and effort. If you are interested in increasing your online presence, but you don’t have the time to do your advertising yourself, it might be time to contact an advertising agency. Direct Placement, LLC is a digital marketing agency dedicated to business advertising. Our staff of trained and certified professionals is standing by to help you create the best advertising strategy for your company. Contact Direct Placement or visit our website now to learn more about our SEM services. You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or Blogger for more online marketing related content and the rest of this .

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