Earlier on this year (February), Google discontinued serving right hand adverts on desktop and trimmed down ad slots from 11 to only 7. This left a wide open space on the desktop SERP and as we have all know, Google does not do anything without a bigger agenda. Google is testing expanded text adverts which have longer headlines. I have not yet seen one of these adverts in SA and here is a before-and-after look from a tweet that has since been deleted – Source: Search Engine Land. The second headline in test version is “Best NY Hotel Rates in Seconds.”

This new ad format can display across devices and in any ad position. At the moment, headlines can only extend to include the first line from the description only when that line ends with a punctuation mark. Furthermore this format is only available to ads served above the fold (i.e. only the top 4). In the next few days, advertisers will be able to use 200 characters (as opposed to the 95) to sell their products and services. Text ads will feature a double (extended) headline and the full 80-character count of the description copy.

Here are the key changes

Source : Inside Adwords Blog

Expanded Ads work well across screens, especially for on-the-go mobile consumers who wants to know exactly what you offer before tapping into your website. Google says it has seen click through rates jumping by as much as 20% when compared to current text ads.

The Display URL is changing as well

Advertisers will be able to add up to two paths or directories to the domain name. In the example above, the advertiser would have entered two paths as “/NewYorkCity” and “/Budget.” This is still a closed test and hence why perhaps we have not seen any adverts here.