Google extends lead forms to YouTube, Discovery campaigns

Google has been testing lead form ad extensions in Search campaigns since last fall. Now, advertisers can use the lead form extensions in YouTube and Discovery campaign ads as well. The company also announced new initiatives to automate data imports into Google Ads.

Lead form ad extensions will be available in Display campaigns later this year, Google noted in its announcement Wednesday.

Google has expanded the field options available for collection since it initially started testing lead forms. Now in addition to name, email, phone number and postal code, advertisers can opt to collect city, state, country as well as business contact information, including company name, job title, work email, work phone.

Then there is the option to add questions to your form based on pre-set questions by vertical. For example, under Real estate, an advertiser could opt to add “What price range are you looking for” to the lead form.

A few things to note about lead form extensions:

• They are not available to advertisers in sensitive verticals or sub-verticals.
• Segment the performance report by “click” and “conversion type” to see lead form click and submission/conversion data.
• Engagement with lead forms won’t be attributed to actions users subsequently take on your site.
• Engagement with lead forms won’t show up in Analytics because users never arrive on your site.
• Leads can be downloaded to a CSV or you can use a webhook to automate lead data imports into your CRM or customer data platform.

Automating data imports. To help advertisers optimize their campaigns to generate leads that are more likely to convert into actual sales, Google said it will be rolling out solutions to make offline conversion imports easier “by just using the information people already give you in your lead form” later this year. Several advertisers are testing this now.

Currently, you can use Zapier to automatically import offline conversions from your CRM to Google Ads.

Customer Match lists also now integrate with Zapier to automate keeping your lists up-to-date. The Zapier integration allows you to automatically upload contacts from whatever CRM, marketing automation or commerce platform you’re using to Google Ads.

Lastly, match rates for customer match will update in real-time in the Google Ads interface.

Why we care. Based on this rollout to other ad campaigns, it looks safe to say that Google has finally cracked lead forms in ads — it tested contact form extensions in 2010 and cost-per-lead-ads in 2011. All of these solutions are aimed at helping small businesses, in particular, capture and act on more leads from their digital campaigns.

Quora recently rolled out its Lead Gen Forms product as well, which also have a Zapier integration that allows you to send leads to Salesforce, Gmail, Marketo and other systems.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Ginny Marvin

Ginny Marvin was Third Door Media’s former Editor-in-Chief (October 2018 to December 2020), running the day-to-day editorial operations across all publications and overseeing paid media coverage. Ginny Marvin wrote about paid digital advertising and analytics news and trends for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.