Messaging 1.0 – ETA and RSA
ETA – expanded text ad
RTA – Responsive search ad – range of copy and headlines and ad assets, it mixes and matches it to try and show the best ad at the moment for the person – 17 million data points! – Trust in the machine, this uses Google’s machine learning
Add one or two ETAs, and one RTA.
Remember that the 3rd headline (of ETAs or RSAs) don’t always show! especially on mobile
Messaging 2.0 – Expanded Text Ads
Why ETAs? -> More control than RSA.
2 or 3 headlines (3rd is optional, but do it – Google may not show 3rd headline). Headlines shown in order.
1 or 2 descriptions
Display URL – can’t change domains, but can change URL Paths in the ad
Ideally 2 ETA + 1 RSA per ad group – that’s how Mike does it, can do it otherwise but this is standard
If you only have one ad type you may be limiting yourself in impressions you would get
ETAs you can still AB test. but remember RSAs are based on machine learning.

Messaging 3.0 – Responsive Search Ads
Up to 15 headlines
Up to 4 Descriptions
Google mix and matches and tries to show the best version of that ad based off of data points of that person.
Reporting for RSA is pretty bad atm
Combinations tab – pretty useless. There are thousands of combinations. Knowing which kind is more often showed isn’t really helpful. Doesn’t tell you CPAs, # conversions, for each combination. That wouldn’t be so useful either with so much combinations out there.
Best Approach
- Write very different headlines, not tiny variations! – this helps Google show different variations
- Look at dif competitors/industries to get inspiration
- CTA, benefits, brand
You can pin headlines to certain positions
Pinning does mess with machine learning quite a bit since you’re limiting the number of combinations based on the pinning of the headline at a certain position. Doesn’t recommend pinning something to position 3 since position 3 doesn’t always show
Surfside PPC Video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU0VFcLfaBU
Audiences – You can target a campaign to different audiences – hold or obvserve. Hold means you target just the audience and that’s it, observe means that you can edit your bids on those audiences to really target them. You can have audiences like those that are in the market for your niche (actively searching) or retargeting/remarketing previous website visitors
Google Ads Editor – You can make a bunch of edits/ad groups at once.
Campaign
– Budget
– Bidding Strategy