Google and other digital players are not waiting on people to catch up to best practices — because, people being people, they don’t seem to want to adopt what works or new data. We don’t like change. ![]()
A good example of this is call-only ads. Google is converting these, making the phone icon more prominent and allowing only the phone number on the first line of the ad.
Google says, “On average, advertisers with the new call-only ads design have seen a 14% increase in phone calls, a 16% increase in call conversions and better cost efficiencies with an 8% decrease in overall paid clicks.”
This design makes the phone tap target more prominent, which reduces accidental clicks by people who didn’t want to make a call. (Just a note that our digital team has been using this design for some time. That’s a proof of performance. Now back to the regularly scheduled blog.)
Google has a long list of requirements that they are forcing on advertisers to take human preference out of the mix. If you don’t have a responsive, mobile-first, fast-loading site, you’ll pay more for your clicks and you’ll be lucky to get clicks at all.
Headline length, body copy length and number of characters in a description are no longer being limited by space, but by Google’s research into what works. You may not like the look or the design, but the data, not personal preferences, are leading the digital charge.
Google sells results, not placement.
