A Guide to Google's Responsive Search Ads

For the past decade, Orbee has been using expanded text ads to advertise vehicles on the Google Search network. These ads consisted of a maximum of three headlines, two descriptions, and a link to a specific page on a website. Effective June 30th, 2022, Google has announced that advertisers will no longer be able to create or edit expanded text ads (ETAs). As a result, advertisers can no longer generate ETAs. Instead, we will be using responsive search ads (RSAs) to create new ads in the Google Search network.

About Responsive Search Ads (RSAs)

RSAs are an ad format in the Google Search Network that automatically combines different headlines and descriptions to create text ads. An advertiser simply creates headlines and descriptions and Google will produce different combinations of those headlines and descriptions and favor the best performing combination. Here is a video about this process.

About Responsive Search Ads

How does this Affect My Active Ads

Because of this transition, Orbee will be creating new RSAs for all search campaigns. Most of these RSAs will use the same ad text as the ETAs. All existing ETAs will continue to run normally. However, there will be changes to the Orbee campaigns we run in light of this new Google update. Please see the details below.

Orb-New Vehicles VIN Specific & Orb-Used Vehicles VIN Specific: 

‍These campaigns will be discontinued and replaced with vehicle listing ads. These vehicle listing ads show a vehicle image in the search results and include information about the price, model, mileage, and other important information. When users click on the ad, they will be directed to the VDP URL. If we are unable to run vehicle listing ads, we will run a search campaign targeting people who are searching for particular vehicle models.

Orb-New Vehicles & Orb-Used Vehicles:

All ETAs will continue to run as long as the vehicles are still available. Once the vehicles are no longer available, the ETAs will be removed and will be replaced with VIN-specific RSAs once inventory is available

Orb-New Vehicles - Make Audience:

This campaign will be discontinued and the Orb-New Vehicles campaign will run its place. Any budget allocated to this campaign will be reallocated to Orb-New Vehicles. 

Orb-Dynamic Search All & Orb-Dynamic Search New:

No changes will be made. Your campaigns will run as usual.

All other search campaigns: 

RSAs will be created and will run alongside ETAs. These relate to brand awareness, events, promotions, or service center campaigns.