If you run a Google Pay Per Click Campaign, you have a slight window of opportunity to leapfrog your competitors to getting a much larger footprint.

We all knew a change was coming, and finally, it’s here. We’re talking about the Google text ads that you see at the top and bottom of Google search pages.

Google are saying that this is the biggest change to happen since it launched 15 years ago, instead of having the 25 character headline followed by 2 x 35 character limit descriptions, the new format makes the ad 47% bigger.

So instead of one headline you get two, each at 30 characters, and then you get 80 characters for your description – so all in all your ads have increased to 140 characters – that’s a lot more real estate for you to get your unique sales message across.

With a mobile-first ethos, this change means that your ad will appear bigger and better on any mobile device, and according to Google when they tested the format at the start of the year the click-through rate increased by 20%.

The other change is the display URL, you don’t have to write the whole URL anymore, Google will make the start of the display URL the same as your destination URL, and then you have the option to add two 15 character extensions.

Now you do have until 26th October to make these changes, but our advice is to get it done straight away. Claim that top spot before your competitors, after the 26th they will only have the option of extended ads, but it will be harder for them to catch up with you if you get there first!

expandedWhen you log in to your AdWords account, go to the Ad tab, and you will see that you can toggle between the standard ads (what we have known for the last 15 years) and now the new extended ads just complete all the blank spaces as normal and hit save!

Now do rethink the entire message of you Ad, don’t just simply think up a second headline as it may not make sense, with 140 characters to play with you can get a little more creative.

Carve out some time in your diary this week to get this job complete, and you’ll leave your competitors wondering what happened!