Google testing carousel of text ads on mobile

It’s already hard to tell how your text ads will render these days — two headlines or three, how many extensions, etc. Now, Google is testing a carousel of text ads on mobile.

Spotted by SEMrush, the ads carousel appears under a “People also considered” heading below the first ad. Note, this is appearing on a brand query for “xfinity” and Xfinity’s own ad does appear at the top, with a full set of extensions.

The ads in the carousel appear with two headlines a truncated description line and no ad extensions.

Why we should care. This likely looks pretty scary to a lot of advertisers thinking this could tank performance for ads that aren’t in the absolute top position — particularly with the carousel ads getting served in this truncated format. Though, if you’re Xfinity, or another brand with competing ads showing in the carousel, you might be pretty pleased. Google will be watching the impact on click volume and click-through rates with this treatment. And it’s not clear if this is also being tested on non-brand terms. The removal of average position metric makes even more sense now.

Shopping ads have appeared in a carousel format for some time now — as have various text ad extensions. All of the Shopping ads are in the carousel, though, and you’ve likely noticed they’ve gotten much, much bigger over the years.

“We’re always testing new ways to improve our experience for our advertisers and users, but don’t have anything specific to announce right now,” a Google spokesperson told us.