In 2022, Google Deprecated Extended Text Ads, Taking More Direct Control of Ad Copy
When Google eliminated Extended Text Ads (ETAs) in 2022, it fundamentally changed the way advertisers create and control search ad copy.
With Extended Text Ads, advertisers wrote the headlines and descriptions that would appear together in an ad. Responsive Search Ads (RSAs) changed that model. Advertisers supply a collection of headlines and descriptions, and Google’s automation determines which assets to serve and how to combine them for individual searches.
Four years later, Responsive Search Ads are firmly established as the standard format for Google Search campaigns. But the evolution hasn’t stopped there.
Google has continued moving more decisions about ad creation, assembly, and delivery into its automation systems. AI-generated text customization and AI Max can now extend that process beyond simply rearranging the ad copy supplied by the advertiser.
Contrary to many narratives you’ll see, that makes the quality of the inputs, campaign structure, reporting, and human oversight more important—not less.
How Responsive Search Ads Work
A Responsive Search Ad can contain as many as 15 headlines and four descriptions. We make it a practice to populate all of them, to take full advantage of the automation.
Google can assemble those assets in different combinations and orders depending on the individual auction. The ads platform uses signals available to it to determine which combination it predicts will be most relevant and effective for a particular search.
This gives Google considerably more flexibility than was possible with fixed-format text ads. It also means advertisers, for better or worse, no longer directly determine exactly which combination of ad copy will appear for every impression.
That tradeoff is greater automation in exchange for less direct control. That’s central to understanding how RSAs should be managed.
Good RSA Ad Copy Has to Work in Multiple Combinations
Writing an RSA isn’t a matter of taking several conventional ads and breaking them into interchangeable pieces. Each headline needs to contribute something useful while still making sense when Google combines it with other headlines. That makes diversity in the ad copy important.
If eight headlines essentially repeat the same selling proposition using slightly different words, Google technically has eight assets to choose from, but it doesn’t have eight meaningfully different messages.
When developing ad copy, we work to give the system distinct ideas to work with. Depending on the advertiser, those might include:
- The primary product or service.
- A major customer benefit.
- A competitive differentiator.
- Geographic relevance.
- Experience or credentials.
- Pricing or promotional information.
- A call to action.
- A specific problem the product or service solves.
The objective isn’t simply to fill all available headline fields. It’s to provide useful, differentiated advertising messages that can survive being rearranged.
Here’s an example from an account we took on for a campaign re-engineering. One aspect of the feature set for a Wi-Fi router was stated in similar ways across 3 headlines:
H5: Dynamic Address Allocation
H6: Automatically Assign Addresses
H7: Automate Address Assignment
Those three headlines say the same thing in different ways. We replaced them with one headline that states the same thing more clearly: “Automatic IP Address Assignment”
Then we replace the other two headlines with benefits:
H5: Automatic IP Address Assignment — feature
H6: Simplify Network Setup — benefit
H7: Get Devices Online Faster — benefit
When we tested that updated ad copy, we measured significantly better ad performance.
Pinning Still Gives Advertisers Some Control
Google allows advertisers to “pin” RSA headlines and descriptions to particular positions. For example, a headline that must appear first can be pinned to Headline 1. Multiple headlines can also be pinned to the same position, allowing Google to rotate among a controlled group of choices.
Pinning can be useful when messaging has to satisfy:
- Legal requirements
- Regulatory requirements
- Brand standards
- Product-specific requirements
- Important offer or qualification language
But pinning also reduces the number of combinations Google can test. For that reason, we don’t view pinning as something that should automatically be avoided, or automatically used. It’s a control that should be applied when there is a sound business reason for using it.
For example, we had a client that was selling frames for a popular flat-screen televison. Even Google Ads would confuse the product with an ad for the tv itself when not carefully monitored. So we pinned Position 1 with copy stating it is a “Frame for {specific tv}”.
Don’t Optimize an RSA Just to Satisfy Google’s Ad Strength Score
Google provides an “Ad Strength” rating for Responsive Search Ads and encourages advertisers to provide a broad selection of unique assets.
That can be useful guidance; an RSA containing repetitive, weak, or incomplete assets usually needs work. But Ad Strength isn’t the same thing as business performance. Not even close! The naming, it has been found, is a bit misleading.
There can also be legitimate reasons to constrain an RSA by pinning ad copy. A regulated advertiser may need certain language to appear. A brand may require a particular message. An ad group may serve specific search intent where adding unrelated variations (merely to increase asset diversity) would weaken the message.
We have clients in larger companies that feel very strongly about how their ad copy is represented, and these are situations where pinning tends makes sense for good business reasons.
We therefore treat “Ad Strength” as a just another diagnostic input. It is well established across third parties working with the major ad platforms, that “Ad Strength” number isn’t well correlated with an ad’s performance.
RSA Reporting Has Improved
One of our concerns when Google moved advertisers away from Extended Text Ads was the limited visibility into RSA performance. There was plenty of complaining about that, and over time, Google has improved the visibility somewhat.
There is now asset-level reporting with performance statistics for individual RSA assets. Advertisers can also review “combination reports” to see which combinations of ad copy have received more impressions.
This is useful information, but it needs to be interpreted carefully, because (for one reason) an ad headline doesn’t operate independently. It appears alongside other headlines and descriptions, for different searches, users, devices, and auctions.
An asset that appears to have a strong conversion rate may have benefited from the combinations and circumstances in which Google chose to serve it. For that reason, individual asset metrics need to be treated as directional evidence, rather than as isolated A/B tests.
Campaign-level business performance remains the more important measure.
Google Can Now Go Beyond the Ad Copy You Provide
This may be the most important development since the original transition from Extended Text Ads to Responsive Search Ads.
With an ordinary RSA, Google assembles combinations from the headlines and descriptions supplied by the advertiser. But Google’s newer text customization capabilities can go further.
When enabled through the “AI Max” feature set for Search campaigns, Google can create additional headlines and descriptions using information from an advertiser’s website, landing pages, existing ads, keywords, and even from generative AI.
This represents another significant shift in control away from advertisers. The question is no longer only:
Which of our headlines will Google combine and serve?
It can also become:
Which advertising messages will Google create for us?
For some advertisers, that additional automation may produce useful incremental performance.
For many others, particularly businesses with brand, legal, regulatory, or product requirements, automatically generated copy deserves careful scrutiny.
These features like shouldn’t be enabled simply because they’re available. They should be evaluated based on the advertiser, the quality of the website and landing-page content Google will use as source material, the risks associated with incorrect messaging, and measurable campaign performance.
Automation Makes Campaign Structure More Important
More automation does not eliminate the importance of campaign and ad-group structure. It increases it. Google’s systems need useful context.
An ad group containing closely related keywords and a landing page tightly aligned with those searches gives the system a much clearer environment in which to select and generate relevant advertising messages.
A loosely structured ad group covering several different products, services, or search intents gives the automation a much harder problem.
This is one reason we continue to pay close attention to search campaign structure even as Google automates more individual campaign decisions.
Automation can make decisions rapidly, but it can’t compensate indefinitely for poor inputs and poor structure.
Conversion Tracking Matters More Than Ad Strength
Ultimately, Google’s automation needs a definition of success. That makes conversion tracking one of the most important components of an automated Search campaign. If a lead-generation campaign tells Google that every submitted form is equally valuable, the bidding system will attempt to generate more submitted forms. It doesn’t inherently know whether those leads became customers.
Similarly, an eCommerce campaign with incomplete purchase values or poor conversion tracking is feeding incomplete information into the bidding system. The more decisions we delegate to automation, the more important the quality of the signals feeding that automation becomes. That applies to bidding as well as ad delivery.
We’ve taken on many Google Ads accounts where the reported conversion numbers looked good, but actual lead quality and sales told a different story.
What We Look for When Reviewing Responsive Search Ads
When reviewing an RSA-based Search campaign, some of the questions we ask include:
- Are the ad headlines meaningfully different from one another?
- Do the headlines and descriptions accurately represent the landing page?
- Can the assets be combined in different orders (sequences) without producing awkward or misleading messages?
- Are the important differentiators (features and benefits) represented?
- Are required brand, legal, or compliance messages protected where necessary?
- Is pinning being used for a legitimate reason rather than simply to recreate an old fixed-format ad?
- Does the ad closely match the intent of the keywords in its ad group?
- Are Google’s automatically generated assets appropriate for this advertiser?
- Does asset-level reporting reveal weak or underperforming messages worth replacing?
- Most importantly, is the campaign generating the conversions, sales, and business results it was designed to produce?
Responsive Search Ads Require Active Management
The disappearance of Extended Text Ads did not eliminate the need for skilled ad copy development. But it did change the job. Instead of controlling every finished ad, advertisers increasingly control the quality of the inputs, the structure surrounding those inputs, the constraints placed on automation, and the performance signals used to evaluate the results. Google’s automation then makes many of the individual auction-level decisions.
That division of responsibility can work, but only if the advertiser understands which decisions have been delegated and continues to evaluate what the automation is actually producing.
The direction of Google Ads is clear: more decisions are being automated, not fewer. Our response isn’t to reject automation. We use automated bidding and other machine-learning systems extensively where they prove useful. But automation needs to earn its place through measurable results.
Our objective isn’t maximum automation; it’s better advertising performance.
If your search campaigns are now running only responsive search ads, Blastoff Advertising can help review your ad copy structure, conversion tracking, reporting, and campaign performance to identify where better control or stronger inputs may be needed. Get in touch to start the conversation.
