The Internet search giant behind one of the world’s top smartphone platforms is giving search ads a tweak.
“To enable advertisers to better connect with potential customers via mobile search,” Google announced late Friday, “we have redesigned our local ad formats for Google Maps for Mobile.”
Google claims that these changes have produced measurable results.
“In initial tests,” writes Jay Akkad, Product Manager for Mobile Ads at Google, “these redesigned formats increased click-through-rates by 100%. This visual redesign will be rolling out today to the newer versions of Android phones.”
Among the noteworthy improvements are:
- Important calls to action like “get directions” and “click to call” are now more prominent in the ad and clickable in more places.
- A new hyperlocal marker shows the user how close they are to an advertiser’s business location.
- Clicking on the ad now takes the user to an advertiser’s website from within the app, making it simple to browse the site without losing context or access to maps app navigation.
“Ads in Google Maps for Mobile are one of many ways advertisers are delivering relevant local answers to people’s questions on mobile,” Akkad says. And it appears that Google has only scratched the surface in terms of future developments and tweaks that are now in the works and will soon roll out to the benefit of developers and advertisers across the Android spectrum.