Yeah, it's a little dated and definitely not auto-centric. I'd challenge dealers to take a look at their AdWords campaigns to see if your agency has installed extensions, they can useful. The majority of dealer ads that I see don't have extensions installed.
To be fair, it's been quite a while since I've seen an automotive agency not use extensions. Granted they may not use them to their fullest potential. The issue I come across most is poorly segmented accounts and too broad of targeting with subpar negative keyword lists.
Not sure where you're looking. I find most automotive AW campaigns (whether done in-house or outsourced) lacking of not only extensions, but ads pulling from an inventory source, detailing actual stock. Lack of details. I think that's getting better with education, but still lacking. I think we are agreeing here.To be fair, it's been quite a while since I've seen an automotive agency not use extensions. Granted they may not use them to their fullest potential. The issue I come across most is poorly segmented accounts and too broad of targeting with subpar negative keyword lists.
That's why we decided to move most of our group's paid search in-house and subsequently experienced a huge performance improvement. I know I'm always skeptical when someone on a forum says that so I'm attaching a screenshot to show that our average CTR this month on 140K searches was 14%. The engagement once they get on our website is even better because the traffic is much more relevant.
^ I filtered out display and video campaigns.
Alexander Lau initiates a discussion about AdWords Extensions for automotive dealers, sharing an article that Ryan Everson critiques as outdated and incomplete regarding newer extension types like message, price, and promotion extensions. The conversation evolves to reveal that while most automotive agencies do use extensions, the real performance gains come from proper account segmentation, targeted keywords, and robust negative keyword lists rather than extension implementation alone. Ryan shares concrete metrics (14% CTR on 140K searches) demonstrating the impact of moving paid search in-house with better strategic optimization.
