Up Your Game: Google Ads Lead Form & Image Extensions

Lead Extensions are a great way to increase your click-throughs. We think two types—Lead Form and Image Extensions—are game changers, if you’re using them well.

What is a Lead Form Extension?

Since 2019, we’ve been leveraging Lead Form Extensions for our clients and we are proud to admit that we love them. More conversions happen when you create a path of least resistance, and Google’s Lead Form Extensions allow us to do just that. With just a couple of clicks from the search engine results page (SERP) or a display ad, the target audience can share their contact information without a) having to visit a web page first, or b) having to fill in their contact details. After a user submits, they are then redirected to the offer, asset or landing page related to the ad.

Just this path month, 68% of our Google conversions for one client came from the Lead Form Extension we deployed. The Lead Form Extension is available for Search, Video, Discovery and Display campaigns ads. Leads can be downloaded from Google, or you can leverage a service like Zappier to filter the leads into your CRM.

Although web traffic is often reduced, we’ve found this tactic to be a fairly cost-effective lead generation tool that makes up for the drop in traffic.

Search Warrant’s Lead Form Extension Tips:

• Google does its best to credit advertisers for fraudulent clicks and form fills from bots, but we’ve found that these types of leads can still make it through. Therefore, we suggest adjusting the lead form settings to “Lead Quality” over “Lead Quantity” to mitigate quality issues.
• Limit the number of fields in the form to only those that are most important to the business and/or are the least intrusive to the user (even though the forms are auto-populated, if there are too many fields, or you ask for too much private information, the user will more-likely choose not to submit).
• Review Google’s information on how to Use Lead Form Extensions and make sure you meet their requirements and policies before trying to implement.

Sample of a Lead Form Extension—from ad to asset:

Sample of a Search ad with the Lead Form Extension

Sample of a Lead Form from a Search ad

Sample of a Confirmation page

Sample of an Asset page

What is an Image Extension?

A recent capability, Google now allows an image to be placed alongside their Search ads. Do not confuse this capability with a Display ad, which are image ads created to be placed on Google’s Display Ad network, and not on the search engine. An advertiser can place up to three images with a text ad, but Google is particular about what kinds of images can be used (see tips for more info). We were  excited by this capability when it was released because in general images get more attention, especially on mobile, and so there’s great potential to impact click-through rate positively.

For some of our clients, we’ve seen a lift of up to 15% relative to Search ads without Image extensions.

Search Warrant’s Image Ad Extension Tips:

• Use it. If you can. It’ll make your ads more engaging, which will likely result in more click-throughs.
• Google wants the images to relate to your product or service. They have an image tool that lets you scrape images from your website and social media accounts. They also provide a stock image library.
• Review Google’s information About Image Extensions and make sure you meet their requirements before trying to implement them. Google is quite particular about who can use this capability and what images they’ll accept.

Sample of an Image Ad Extension:

Sample of a Search Ad with an Image Extension

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