Google Ads seems to be testing showing search ads in the Google Search results without ad copy, without the ad description text you added to your ads. I guess Google wants to see what type of impact this has on ad performance.
This was spotted by Anthony Higman, who posted screenshots and his distaste for this test on LinkedIn. First, here is his screenshot:
He wrote how unhappy he has been with Google Ads over the year:
Top Two Ads Have Ad Copy, The Two Ads Below That DO NOT!I want to talk about something that I see as a serious problem in Google advertising at the current moment in time. THERE IS NO LONGER A SOURCE OF TRUTH!
I have heard from many ad pro's this year about results suddenly falling off a cliff for no reason and the fact that there is no findable explanation on why this is. I believe this is a consequence of what Google is doing in the "ai era"
Google has been conducting a flurry of tests in the last few years, on a scale that has never been seen before. This is all done as they further push automation and recommendations and encourage taking our eyes off the important metrics in accounts. The problem is that a lot of times the actual metrics that professional advertisers rely on to be accurate, no longer are as Google increases these test that are comparing apples to oranges.
This is evident in this screenshot below. There are four ads at the top of the page. Two of those ads have ad copy in them, the two below that do NOT! The bottom two ads are a different ad format with two photos, the top ads have 1 photo. These photos are constantly changing and so we can not even accurately compare one ad to another now.
How in the world can we trust any metrics in platform when these ads are drastically different and dont have all of the pieces of the top ads? We CANNOT and thats the point! Google does not want us to have the pieces of the puzzle anymore, they dont want our metrics to be actionable, they want you to just "trust the machine".
So as we get deeper into the "ai era" Remember that automation comes with convenience but also a high cost. It hides and obscures data and knowledge and KNOWLEDGE IS POWER! Remember this!
I mean, Google is very well know to always test things. They test things that might not make a lot of sense, just to see what happens. There is some interesting comments on LinkedIn about this test.
Forum discussion at LinkedIn.
