Google’s Pay Per Click Adverts used to be a bland four lines of text including a headline, two lines of copy and a link to the advertiser’s website. Over the past few months Google have rolled a series of what they call “ad extensions” which enhance pay per click adverts by including more information with the standard pay per click adverts. I covered Google’s ad extensions in a blog post I made in April 2013:
http://blog.dbsinternetmarketing.co.uk/2013/04/get-more-business-with-google-adwords.html However, the latest news is that Google are now trialling “Image ad” extensions with their pay per click ads.
In the screenshot below you can see that a search for “hi tec” brought up hi-tec’s pay per click advert along with 3 product images. Obviously this has a massive visual impact. 
The new Google Image Ad feature is currently only available to a select few at the moment. As with all Google features there are policies and constraints within this ad extension. At the moment it appears that Image Ads are only available to advertisers who hold the number 1 pay per click ad spot. It’s likely that pay per click advertisers will now bid more to grab the #1 spot and therefore get Image Ads. This will add to Google’s revenue. Image Ads are perfect for advertisers who sell image based products as they certainly makes adverts stand out. Image ads will be particularly effective when the pay per click advert is well set up with other available ad extensions as this will take up more valuable space in Google’s search engine results and attract the eye. I’m sure we will be noticing these new image ads more and more over the next 12 months. It’s certainly going to be interesting when this feature is rolled out to everyone as I am sure it will be in good time.
I will keep you informed if and when they are available to UK advertisers.