Recently, I saw a tweet regarding the use of Title Case in PPC ads and questioned what other marketers were doing in their ads. Replies varied based on opinion and personal visual preferences, but no one had tested it out. Well, I have for two different clients. So, I’m publishing the results here to share with the rest of you!
With the rise of Responsive Search ads, Headline 3s and Description 2s, the use of all uppercase throughout the entire ad might look clunky and be harder for some to read, especially depending on the device. Take note of how differently the same ad can look with:
- Title Case used throughout the ad in all segments
- Title Case in just the headlines with sentence case description
- Sentence Case throughout the ad in all segments
Here’s what each of those looks like:
Title Case Tests – Client A
This is a B2B client where we segment our ad tests by country and by brand and non-brand. This year, we tested the use of Title Case in the following areas with winners highlighted below in green. Ad variations in grey were paused due to poor performance at some point in the test.
Results
Results Summary
- Google Ads US Brand – concluded the test without a statistically valid winner. Small side note that we left this test on longer than we typically would’ve because we were doing landing page testing. These results are the combination of both landing pages.
- Microsoft Ads US Brand – concluded the test without a statistically valid winner
- Microsoft Ads UK Brand – sentence case description was the winner
Title Case Tests – Client B
This is also a B2B client where we segment our ad tests by device and by brand and non-brand. We target several English-speaking countries in our campaigns. This year, we tested the use of Title Case in the following areas with winners highlighted below in green.
Ad variations in grey were paused due to poor performance at some point in the test.
Results
Results Summary
- Google Ads Brand Desktop – control ad Title Case in all segments was the winner
- Google Ads Non-Brand Desktop – concluded the test without a statistically significant winner between just the sentence case description and sentence case all components
- Google Ads Non-Brand Mobile – concluded the test without a statistically valid winner
- Microsoft Ads Brand Desktop – sentence case all was the winner
Title Case Testing Conclusion
If you tally the winning results across all tests, you get the following:
- Title Case All (control): 3 ad tests (all Google, one Brand, two Non-Brand)
- Title Case Headlines Only: 2 ad tests (both Microsoft Ads, both Brand)
- Sentence case all: 2 ad tests (one Google, one Microsoft Ads, both Brand)
We rolled out the capitalization based on what we found for each test segment. While the results here aren’t definitive across the board, it just means that you should consider testing this out for your clients to see what their results would be. I would tend to suggest this even more if you have a strong presence on Microsoft Ads you might see a bigger difference there like we did. Additionally, we did see a stronger difference in Brand preferring a sentence case variation over Title Case All in comparison to non-brand which all preferred Title Case.
Is this data enough for you to see a definitive difference in your business? No. You’ll have to test it for each client to know for sure.
Title Case Ad Test Set-Up Observation
Just a warning, setting up the test wasn’t super easy because neither Google Ads Editor nor Microsoft Advertising Editor recognized the case changes as new ads but instead wanted to update the existing control ads. I got around this by changing the description to “123” for the import and then used the find/replace feature. I also did this for one ad creative at a time to help make sure I got it right. As I usually do, I relied on labels to differentiate each ad type across multiple campaigns.
Have you tested Title Case in your PPC ads? What did you find? Comment below to share your results with us!
