Responsive Search Ads
Playbook
What are responsive
search ads?
Search Unboxed
Why responsive search ads?
The ways people search are constantly
changing. In fact, 15% of search queries every
day are new searches we’ve never seen
before. In order to capture this growth,
businesses should invest in the right data and
automated solutions.
Responsive search ads offer true query-time
optimization by assembling the assets into ads
that are predicted to perform best for each
individual user’s search. This means evaluating
tens of thousands of potential ads in a fraction
of a second to show more relevant messages
to for each person based on contextual and
intent signals.
+7%
conversions
Advertisers that switch from expanded text ads to
responsive search ads, using the same assets, see an
average of 7% more conversions at a similar cost
per conversion
Source: Google internal data. Impact will vary by advertiser, and Google cannot guarantee this or any other uplift.
What is happening to
expanded text ads?
Search Unboxed
The Only Search ad type: Responsive Search Ads
Starting June 30, 2022, responsive search
ads will be the only Search ad type that
can be created or edited in standard
Search campaigns. This change will help
simplify the way you create Search ads and
make it easier for you to drive performance
with our automated tools.
●
●
●
●
Your existing expanded text ads will
continue to serve alongside responsive
search ads
You'll still see reports on their performance
going forward
You'll be able to pause and resume your
expanded text ads or remove them if
needed.
You’ll also still be able to create and edit call
ads and Dynamic Search Ads.
Proprietary + Confidential
FAQ’s regarding life after ETA sunset
-
Should we pause/delete etas and just keep the RSA after the deprecation?
No, we don’t recommend pausing/deleting etas unless they are out of date. In fact, pausing/deleting all ETA in
a short period of time might cause some volume issues in the short term.
-
Will you change the limit of 3 RSAs per ad group with ETA deprecation?
No, we don’t have plans to change the limit at this point. If you have a strong case please let us know since we
are collecting use cases.
-
Do you have plans to launch rest of the ad customizers in RSA? (e.g if functions)
If functions: We are not planning to launch “if functions” since we are thinking about a more holistic solution
for audience based ad customizers (no timelines yet).
Location based customizations: Eng is aware of the need for location based customization and actively
thinking about the solution but no timelines yet.
Scheduling of the feed items: If you need to schedule your feed items for flighted campaigns, you can use
the Google Sheet functions to update your messaging .
ETA to RSA feed migration tool
What are the creative
best practices?
Search Unboxed
A Formula for Success
415-555-5555
Text us
1 Responsive Search
Ads with
Good/Excellent Ad
strength per ad group
G2.Goo
4+ extensions
per ad group
Pair responsive search
ads with broad match
keywords and Smart
Bidding
Smarter Together
Pair broad match keywords and Smart Bidding with responsive search ads to help you reach new,
high-performing queries and optimize your bids in real time. Advertisers that adopt responsive search ads in
campaigns that also use broad match and Smart Bidding see an average of 20% more conversions at a
similar cost per action.
Smart Bidding
Uses billions of combinations of
signals to set the right bid for each
query and auction, based on your ROI
goals.
Smart Bidding can help you stay on
top of market trends and rapidly
shifting demand by optimizing your
bids in real time.
Learn more
Broad Match
Responsive Search Ads
Finds new, high-performing queries
and emerging trends to reach more
customers & drive better
performance.
Automatically assembles the most relevant
creative for every auction— even helping
you show for new queries.
We’re continuously improving broad
match by considering new signals (like
user location or recent search
activity), improving relevance for
keyword variations, and matching
holistically with all keywords in your ad
group.
Learn more
Supply up to 15 headlines and 4
descriptions as your creative assets. The
system will then use these assets to
automatically create new ads tailored to
each query based on auction-time signals.
Learn more
Cheat Sheet for writing RSA headlines & descriptions
Text ideas
Description
High query relevance
Keywords in your ad text show your ad’s
relevance to what people want.
●
‘Buy Digital Cameras’ if digital cameras is a
keyword in the ad group
Product or service
What are you offering? What are its features?
●
●
Bouquets from Local Growers
Certified Pre-Owned Cars
Problem you’re solving &
benefits
Step into your customers’ shoes. How does
your offering add value, solve their problems
and improve their lives?
●
●
Post your Job to Multiple Sites in Seconds
Hassle-Free Meals in 30 Minutes
Brand
If you have a strong brand, emphasize it.
●
●
Brand Name
Best prices from [brand]
Slogans & taglines
Short and striking phrase
●
●
Ask more of your phone
Build what’s next
Tip: Include ways that define your brand, such
as title/sentence case, punctuation or
trademark symbols.
Examples
Call to action
What do you want your customers to do? Add
urgency.
●
●
Book Your Hotel in Las Vegas
Schedule a Test Drive Today
Trust
Why should customers trust you?
●
●
●
Over [num] Years’ Experience
Official Site
Certified and Accredited
Cheat Sheet for writing RSA headlines & descriptions
Text ideas
Description
Inventory & selection
What categories, options and selections do
you offer?
●
100s of Options to Choose From
Support & customer
service
How do you provide support? What are the
costs and availability?
●
●
24/7 Service
Call Toll-Free
Warranties or
guarantees
What assurances can you offer?
●
●
Lifetime Warranty
Low Price Guaranteed
Shipping & Returns
What shipping options do you provide and at
what cost?
●
●
●
Same-Day Delivery
Free Shipping
Hassle-Free Returns
How do customers return products and what
are the costs?
Examples
Pricing & fees
Prices, taxes, processing and misc fees
●
●
Book from $[num]
No Cancellation Fees
Incentives & discounts
Quantifiable and non-quantifiable discounts
and deals
●
●
Up to 33% Off
Weekend Deals
Payment Details
What payment options and schedules do
you provide? How do you provide a better
payment experience than your competitors?
●
●
Fast & Secure
Buy With Confidence
Awards, Ratings,
Reviews
Quantifiable as well as generic ratings and
reviews
●
●
[num] Million Happy Customers
[num] Star Service
How can I create and
optimize RSAs at scale?
Search Unboxed
1. Optiscore recommendations
Recommendation: Add responsive
search ads
Recommendation: Add assets to your
responsive search ads
Recommendation: Improve your
responsive search ads
The recommendation will show a
suggestion for an RSA ad using your etas
assets
The recommendation will show a
suggestion to improve your RSA assets
by adding headlines and descriptions
from your existing ETAs in the same ad
group
The recommendation will show a
suggestion to improve your RSA Ad
strength when you have an Ad
strength below “Good”
Review the suggested ads and make
adjustments if needed (ie improve the
Ad strength if needed)
2. Ad builder (SA360)
Add new assets to
thousands of ad groups
with a few clicks
Easily update ads from a
single screen
Customize the ads for
each ad group with
smart automation
SA360 Ad Builder - Help Center
3. Google Ads Editor
Responsive search ads can be created and optimized with Google Ads Editor. Please ensure you have the
latest version in order to see the option to create responsive search ads.
Pinning
Ad Strength
Recommendations
What is Ad strength?
Search Unboxed
Your ads are as good as
the assets you provide.
Confidential & Proprietary
Ad Strength
Ad strength measures the relevance, quantity, and
diversity of your responsive search ad content.
Combined with actionable feedback, Ad strength
makes it easy for you to improve the effectiveness
of your ads even before they serve.
+9%
conversions
You will see one of the 5 different Ad strength
ratings when you work on your responsive search
ad:
Incomplete, Poor, Average, Good and Excellent.
Along with these ratings, you will see action items to
Up to 9% more clicks & conversions from
improving Ad strength from Poor to Excellent
help improve the effectiveness of your ads.
Source: Google internal data. Impact will vary by advertiser, and Google cannot guarantee this or any other uplift.
Where can I find Ad strength?
Ad strength can be found :
In the UI
During ad creation:
You can see your Ad
strength real time while
creating your RSAs in
the UI.
Post ad creation:
In the ads table, filter
your RSAs by Ad
strength and view Ad
strength improvements
column to improve any
RSAs with Poor and
Average Ad strengths.
Google Ads Editor
You can use "Check Ad
strength" button that shows
the Ad strength of selected
ads. This can be used to
evaluate a new ad before
uploading it live.
In addition, you can also
review your ad strength in a
new column and view Ad
Strength improvements when
you hover over the ad
strength.
Simply API
Recommendations
You can find the Ad strength
in the Simply API.
See Recommendation page
to view “Improve your
responsive search ads’’
suggestion and improve
your RSAs with Poor and
Average Ad strengths.
How can I Improve Ad strength?
1.Make your headlines and descriptions unique
Action items
By providing more unique headlines and descriptions; more unique
combinations can be generated to maximize the performance of your
ads.
2.Include your popular keywords in your headlines and descriptions
Add your popular, high-impression keywords that have in your headlines
Overall rating
and descriptions to be more relevant to your user. You can also use
Keyword Insertion to improve relevancy.
3.View asset and keyword suggestions in the Ad strength tool
View asset and keyword suggestions in the Ad strength tool and accept
the suggestions as is, edit, or simply use as inspiration to advertise your
product or service.
Keyword suggestions
Pinning may decrease your Ad strength. Don’t forget to pin multiple options to the same place to maximize the
performance of your RSA.
Ad strength FAQs
What is the difference between Ad strength and Quality score?
Ad strength and quality score are not related. You cannot improve your Quality Score directly using any
information from or changes made in your Ad Strength. Please use this help center article if you are looking for
ways to improve your ads quality.
How does match type impact Ad strength?
Ad strength is not impacted by match type. Ad strength is based on keyword text.
How often will the Ad strength metric change?
Once you have reached a good or excellent metric, is still important to keep an eye on it, as the Ad strength
could change according to the keyword relevance, auction dynamics etc.
My Ad strength is
good or excellent.
How can I further
optimize my RSAs?
Search Unboxed
Use reporting to optimize your responsive search ads
“How can I see my RSAs
overall performance
(eg clicks, conversions,
CTR)”
#1
Ad level
reporting
“How can I understand the
performance of my assets
to optimize them?”
#2
Asset
reporting
“How can I see which
combinations served?”
#3
Combination
reporting
What reports
are available
to measure &
drive
success?
Ad level reporting
Asset level
reporting
Combination
report
What is it?
Performance data for
your responsive
search ads. (same as
ETA)
Reporting on the
effectiveness of
individual assets to
help you optimize and
refresh assets.
View of the most
common assets
combination.
What should it
be used for?
Understanding how
responsive search ads
increase campaign
level performance.
Replacing assets that
are low-performing.
Gaining a more
holistic view of your
creative assets. You
don’t need to take
any action.
Best practices
Measure the impact
by focusing on the
additional clicks for
your ad group. Don’t
overly fixate on
metrics like
click-through rate and
conversion rate.
Review the asset level
report every 2 weeks.
Do not just delete
assets but replace
them with new ones
instead.
Do not use this
report to make static
versions of the asset
combinations.
Ad Level Report
“How can I see my RSAs overall performance (eg clicks, conversions, CTR)”
Recommendation:
Avoid CTR comparisons;
improve Ad strength
Understanding how responsive
search ads increase campaign
or ad group level performance.
You can see all the metrics on
the ad level to assess your
campaign’s performance
Asset Level Report
“How can I understand the performance of my assets to optimize them?”
Recommendation:
Replace assets with
‘Low’ rating
Remember to replace poor
performance assets. Simply
removing will reduce the
number of combinations your
ad can generate.
Optional: You can use Ad
variations tool to test new
ideas.
Some of your assets might not get impressions if other assets are predicted to perform better. If one your assets
doesn’t get impression over 2+ weeks , we recommend replacing that asset with a new one since.
Combination Report
“How can I see which combinations served?”
Recommendation:
Do not use this report to
make static versions of the
asset combinations.
If you need to know/report which
combinations actually served, view
this report.
Reporting FAQs
How does Google assess the performance of an asset?
With every ad shown on a search result page, our machine learning systems are able to better understand
which message is best for each query and user context. The responsive search ads system is able to determine
if an ad competes and wins the auction and how it performs with users — and then feed that data back into the
machine learning model to make a more informed decision for future queries.
How can I do creative
testing with RSA?: Ad
variations
Search Unboxed
Use ad variations to test and iterate creative messages
You can test different assets and review their performance
across multiple campaigns by using ad variations. With
creative testing, you can learn about your users’
preferences and improve your performance by honing ad
text, especially your headlines. For example, see how a different
headline or call to action, like “Request a free quote,” impacts
performance.
You can run ad variation in order to:
1.
Find and replace assets
2.
Add assets
3.
Remove Assets
4.
Pin Assets
Ad variations Reporting
Creative testing Faq’s
How can I test the performance when I show a specific asset vs when I dont show it?
You can use the “Add asset” with ad variations. (you can find the ss here)
How can test assets in specific ad groups within a campaign
Ad variations only supports campaign level. If there is a specific feature on those ads in the ad groups (eg specific
asset), you can use find and replace feature and it will only impact those RSAs. (ss) Eng teams are aware of the ask
to test on the ad group level but there are no timelines.
When I want to test if my promotions work, how do I go about it? I want to run control with no
promo message and experiments with a promo message?
You can use the “Add asset” with ad variations. (you can find the ss here)
How do I test with Pinning vs without pinning. Is there a best practice?
You can use test pinning with ad variations. (ss) Best practice is not to pin and let our machine learning maximize
the performance.
Do we still recommend using ad variation testing with RSA in the same manner as ETA?
Creative testing is optional and every company has their own strategy. RSA Ad variations work similar to ETA ad
variations but you can test more things with RSA like pinning or adding more assets. You can also do an ad
variation test if you want to replace “low” labelled assets and want to test the new idea first before replacing.
How can I use RSA for my
promotional campaigns?
Search Unboxed
1. Do you always need to show promotional asset?
When you add your promotion asset, RSA will show it in combinations where we expect it to perform well.
You can use pinning if you need your promotion always shows.
If you do pin, provide multiple options in
the position since RSAs perform best when
machine learning has ample asset options to
choose from when combining the best ad for
a given searcher.
Keep in mind that pinning might decrease
your Ad strength.
If you have content that must be shown in every ad, you should pin it to either headline
positions 1 or 2 or description position 1.
2. Do your promotional assets have an end date?
Similar to ETA, You can use labels to identify which RSAs contain promotional asset. For example, you can have 2
RSAs in the ad group, 1 for your evergreen message and 1 for your promotional message and label them.
(See here how to create and manage labels)
On promo start date, you can enable your
promotional RSAs
● Either manually by filtering the labels
● Or through a scheduled automated rule
● (Optional) If you need to show only your
promotional RSA, you can pause the
evergreen ad (either manual or automated
rule)
● (Optional) Use Countdown Customizers to
let potential customers know about sales or
special events by adding a countdown to
your ad text
On promo end date, you can reverse the action
you took on promo start date.
3. Will details of your promotion change frequently?
You can dynamically update your assets using the Business Data feed, which is the most common method i
when updating promotions. You can find more information on RSA ad customizers here.
Benefits of ad customizers
Tailored messaging: Ads are hyper-specialized to each
search or web page being viewed.
Scalability: Customizers let a single text ad have
hundreds of variations, and show the most relevant
variation to each potential customer.
Reporting: The automatic updates that happen when
an ad is triggered don't reset the ad's performance
data.
Ad . www.exampleshoes.com
The New xxx (Product) | Starting from $Xx (Price) |
Huge Selection to Choose from
Delivers Innovative Products, Free Shipping And
Returns on every order
If you need to show the asset with Ad customizers, you can use pinning.
4. Do you need to schedule your ad customizers?
RSA ad customizer business feed doesn’t have the ability to schedule feed item (start date - end date) However if
you need to schedule your feed items for flighted campaigns, you can use the Google Sheet functions to update
your messaging and schedule regular bulk uploads to import in the new messages and replace outdated ones :
1.
2.
3.
When you add “#” in front of a value/attribute, Google ads will ignore it. So in the example below, columns D,E,F,G won’t be used
by Ad customizers but those columns will be useful to update the account value (column C)
Don’t forget to use “remove_value” function in column C (Account value) so this will ensure to remove the value in column C and
replace it with column E (your message that you want to show after the end date) if today is later than the end date (column G)
You will need to schedule the bulk upload of the file regularly to ensure that the changes are reflected in the system. For example,
if you have new offers going live every day, we recommend scheduling the Google Sheet every 24 hours at 1 AM to import any
offers going live that day and remove expired offers accordingly.
How can I use RSA if I
have strong brand
guidelines or legal
requirements?
Search Unboxed
Control Feature: Pinning
By default, when you create a responsive search ad, headlines and descriptions can appear in any order. You can
control where individual headlines and descriptions appear in your ad by pinning headlines and descriptions to
specific positions.
One field pinned to one
position
Multiple fields pinned to
the same position
Limited control
(Recommended) Limited control
Pinning to all positions
Full control
1
1
Same Day Flower Delivery
Same Day Flower Delivery
29/30
1
BestFlowers® Flower Delivery
11/30
29/30
2
Delivery In Less Than 4 Hours
1
Delivery In Less Than 4 Hours
30/30
Headlines pinned
Pinning one headline or description causes it to show
only in that specific position, preventing others from
showing in that position.
Fresh and Local Flowers
24/30
30/30
Headlines pinned
If you pin multiple headlines to the same position,
at least one will appear in that position in every ad
3
Beautiful Flowers Bouquets
21/30
How can I avoid truncation?
1.
If you have mandatory language (e.g., terms & conditions may apply) that must be shown to the
user, then you must pin it to 1 of Headline 1, Headline 2 or Description Line 1 otherwise the text
is not guaranteed to show.
2.
(very conservative) Our tests have indicated that a maximum of 33 characters across both
Headline 1 & Headline 2 should prevent truncation generally
3.
Please keep in mind: Depending on the device screen (i.e. smaller mobile screen devices) we
may truncate the display URL, Headline 3, and Description line 2.
39