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Google responsive display ads roll out as new default display format

Advertisers upload their assets and leave the ad creation to Google's algorithms.

Ginny Marvin on September 11, 2018 at 3:52 pm

A look at the asset performance reporting available for responsive display ads in the Google Ads interface.

Google announced this week that responsive display ads (RDA) will be rolling out to all advertisers over the next few months.

Much like Google’s responsive search ads, advertisers provide several inputs and the ads get assembled on the fly by Google’s machine learning algorithms.

Advertisers can add up to 15 images, five headlines, five descriptions and five logos for responsive display ads.

Performance is broken out by asset in a new report located under “View asset details” from the “Ads & extensions” section (as shown in the screen shot above). In the performance column, Google will provide a rating of Best, Good or Low. If there is not enough data collected on an asset, it will be tagged with “Learning.”

The formats will look familiar (examples shown below). Google touts the benefits of responsive ads as time-saving and offering broader reach, as the ads can resize to fit most inventory, including native banner ads and dynamic text ads.

Three variations of a responsive display ad

This format also supports dynamic remarketing. To create dynamic responsive display ads, simply associate a feed with your RDA campaign. Google may automatically show tags such as “new,” “hot” or “price drop” on products when appropriate, based on the feed.

See the Google Ads help page for more details on creating RDA campaigns.

Google has been moving in this direction for years now, first introducing responsive ads for display that automatically resize in 2016. Those had fewer asset options, however, and responsive display ads will replace responsive ads for display as they roll out. And then there are Google’s Smart display campaigns which automate just about every aspect of the campaign, from ad creation to bidding. For advertisers that want full control over how their display ads appear, there is still the option to upload your own display ads.

About The Author

Ginny Marvin

Ginny Marvin is Third Door Media's Editor-in-Chief, managing day-to-day editorial operations across all of our publications. Ginny writes about paid online marketing topics including paid search, paid social, display and retargeting for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, she has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.