When Gallery Ads were announced last May during the annual Google Marketing Live conference I must admit I got pretty excited.
What are Gallery Ads and are they available yet?
Gallery Ads are more visually compelling ads that are only available on mobile. They offer a scrollable gallery of 4 to 8 images and a 70-character description for each image. Yes, you read correctly, images in search ads. Game changer? Maybe.
Google said in a blog post earlier this year that, in testing, Gallery ads saw “25% more interactions” that other search ad units.
Advertisers get charged for gallery ad interactions in one of two ways. Either on a cost-per-click basis when a user clicks on the ads text, just like any other search ads, or after the user swipes through three images in the gallery.
And here it comes the tricky bit. How will this affect CPC and overall spend? Gallery Ads have been available in beta to selected advertisers worldwide since early last August but I could not find any blog from people who tried them and shared data or performance. When I saw them in my accounts I wanted to try them straight away but I’m still convincing the client to test them.
I’m curious to see what’s their delivery, the number of impressions they get and also how much the average CPC or cost per interaction for these ads are going to be. At the same time, I’ve made a commitment to myself to be bolder and more proactive in my campaign management as I found myself being quite conservative most of the times.
Anyone has tried them already? Let me know!
Elisabetta | Paid Media Specialist 