PSA take advantage of the Expanded Text Ads beta to prepare for the future of paid search, and make substantial performance gains in the process.
A key pillar in the online marketing strategy of PSA - the parent group behind motoring brands Peugeot, Citroen and DS Automobiles - is their embrace of innovation. By adopting new technologies and formats as early as possible, the brand looks to demonstrate their leadership in the sector, and to reap the benefits of first-mover advantage. This approach has already seen PSA making use of a wide range of digital marketing products in conjunction with their agency partner OMD UK, including AdWords, the Google Display Network and YouTube. Most recently, PSA began using AdWords Expanded Text Ads in an effort to increase engagement with their marketing messages and drive lead generation on their websites.
Expanded Text Ads allow for longer headlines without sacrificing description copy, giving marketers a higher word count to play with. As Jack Stingemore, Search Manager at OMD UK explains, PSA began considering Expanded Text Ads as part of an effort to wring greater performance from their existing budgets: “We had to think outside the box to drive incremental traffic and deliver additional leads at no additional cost. We knew we had to be at the forefront of innovation to get the best value from our paid search campaigns.”
OMD UK implemented Expanded Text Ads by first updating PSA’s best-performing existing ads to the new format, making use of the additional space to include extra information around model specifics and other USPs. Once this core set of creative was transitioned over, the format was then rolled out across the brand’s other accounts. With this phase of implementation complete, OMD UK now intend to explore how ETAs can influence remarketing campaigns, with the greater space opening up even more opportunities to personalise copy and boost re-engagement through specific offers and calls-to-action.
The Results
The performance of the ETA campaigns was measured using DoubleClick Search and Google Analytics, with the latter particularly useful in understanding on-site behaviour that could then be fed back into PSA’s remarketing strategy. ETAs performed well against OMD UK’s KPIs of Click-Through Rate (CTR) and Cost-Per-Click (CPC), with the campaigns experiencing a 113% uplift in CTR and a 35% reduction in CPC. “We expected an uplift in performance,” remarks Jack Stingemore, “but more than doubling CTR was higher than we could ever have imagined!”
Cathryn Hancock, Head of Media at PSA, is in no doubt as to the value of the brand’s embrace of innovation. “Working with OMD UK, PSA has been able to showcase our breadth of offers for Peugeot, Citroën and DS Automobiles within a single ad by adopting Expanded Text Ads. As a result of the format’s strong performance, we’ve rolled out ETAs across all PSA accounts, and are more keen than ever to engage in beta tests to enhance our digital marketing strategy.”
