Why Ad Extensions Are Capturing My Attention Lately

My recent fixation with ad extensions has me wondering why 🧐 search engines haven't enhanced their service to include a full suite of dynamic content to improve customer engagement. The additions I've seen over the years have mainly consisted of carousels for popular products, a locations map, a full company profile, and more recently Google Ai overviews. However these are all somewhat disconnected from the SEO/SEM ads that show up on the same SERP. Also there are more engaging and convenient advertising on social media as businesses are able to include dynamically interactive images, videos, carousels, and reviews that all link to the company's website or straight to the shopping cart. Since these features exist outside of the typical search engine I find myself using social media as a search tool to find out about businesses and their current products and services and no longer rely soley on Google. And I’m not the only one, this is a growing trend in how consumers especially the gen z demographic are interacting and thinking digitally. On top there are other platforms to now search - ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Llama. Despite these changes in consumer behaviour according to eMarketer Google will still remain as the main top search ad spending destination forecasted to 2028 and the new kid on the block Bing’s global DAU is +40% YoY after the CoPilot launch. Since we’re still heavily invested in traditional search I’m circling back to my current fixation with Ad extensions and their benefits.

Ad extensions have existed for some time. Nothing new and they're definitely not supercharged customer experience features I would have envisioned in 2025 however in the current world of SERP they are a quick way to boost visibility and provide byte sized contextual information to your customers.

Ad extensions are complimentary optional features offered by search engine platforms that can be incorporated mostly to your SEM ad campaign. SEO results are limited to automated extensions which are mostly sitelinks (you have no control over these links btw 🙈🙉🙊 but you can control page meta titles and descriptions at least). Ad extensions improve your ad quality score and reduce cost-per-click. They improve user experience by providing relevant information at a glance before a customer visits your website and more relevant information leads to better-informed clicks and a higher CTR. Ad extensions are a powerful addition to your digital SEM strategy, helping customers reach what they need faster and improving overall campaign performance. It can actually circumnavigate the need to visit your website completely 🤯 👈 this is why I’m fixated with ad extensions and why I think it’s crazy Google hasn’t flexed on this feature.

Types of Ad Extensions

📍 Location Extensions

   Displays business address, and enables users to find nearby locations on a map.

📞 Call Extensions

   Allows users to call directly from the ad, increasing chances of conversion.

🔗 Sitelink or Action Extensions

   Links to specific pages on the website, directing users to relevant content. Sitelink extensions increases the ads page real estate which is crucial to standing out from competitors listed on the same SERP.

🗂️ Structured Snippet Extensions

   Highlights specific aspects of products or services offered, facilitating better decision-making.

💲 Price Extensions

   Displays pricing information prominently, setting clear expectations for users.

📣 Callout Extensions

Highlight features and selling points and offers.

🤖 Automatic Extensions

Links to specific pages on the website, directing users to relevant content. These are automatically added to your ad as determined by the search engine's criteria.

A quick search on Google or Bing can show you which of your competitors are utilising the SEM ad booster. It's a mixed bag of interesting results as there are just as many businesses who don’t use these features as ones who do. The Nike brand uses SEM sponsored popular products and within the carousel includes price extensions, customer ratings, location extensions and call out extensions. These were the most visually appealing ads with the most variety of ad extensions on search that sat at both above the fold and midway down the page.

Image: Popular Products with ad extensions

Nike's SEM sponsored ad only used sitelink extensions while their SEO search result sat directly beneath with automated sitelink extensions. The noticeable difference was the carefully crafted wording.

Image: SEM Sitelink extensions

Image: SEO Sitelink extensions

A few successful affiliated smaller businesses that sell Nike were more likely to use a variety of extensions such as location extensions as well as customer ratings, price extensions, and call out extensions whereas Nike relied on the locations feature that was automatically generated in the SERP.

Image: Customer ratings, Price extensions, Call out extensions

💡Tip

It's best to implement a variety of ad extensions to engage different user preferences. The more extensions you provide the better as it will give the search engine more options to test. Although Bing only allows for one extension at a time, Google will allow for several extensions but will prioritise the extensions that have a higher confidence score. You can also check your competitors ads and see if you can word your extensions more succinctly to give you advantage over your competitors.

With ad extensions, you can take your SEM ads to the next level, providing customers with a seamless experience and businesses with measurable results. Monitor the performance of ad extensions by analysing conversions, CTR, and observing which content and extension types yield the best results and ROI.