What Is Ad Strength And Why Is It Important?

When Responsive Search Ads first came to be with Google, we were excited to try them out. The idea was fabulous! However, we encountered two main problems with them at that time.

1. We couldn’t tell which ad components performed than others.
2. In tests, they didn’t outperform my Expanded Text Ads. I tested these across numerous clients and CPLs or CPAs weren’t lower, but higher.

As a result, for a while, I hadn’t used them much. I’m started to rethink my stance about them and give them another try for a couple of reasons (and here is where Ad Strength comes in).

1. I think the algorithm needed time to learn how to use them effectively. Results are better now than when we first started.
2. I believe they are the way of the future. Frankly, I’m expecting a time to come in the nearish future when they will be the only text ad type. I don’t have a crystal ball to say for sure, but with all the other pushes for automated settings, I believe our options will become less and less. Therefore, I want to ease my way into getting them to work now versus being “stuck” with them later.
3. The Ad Strength feature makes them much more reliable now so you can tell how they are performing and what to improve.

Let’s take a deeper look into Ad Strength so you can see for yourself how it works.

What is Ad Strength?

Ad strength has two components to it.

1. The first, the ad strength score, reflects ad effectiveness. An ad can receive a rank of Poor, Fair, Good or Excellent based on the results of the ad.
2. The second is ad strength improvements, which outlines recommendations to improve the ad’s performance. Frequent examples include:
   1. Add more headlines
   2. Headlines/Descriptions are too similar
   3. Headlines/Descriptions are too short
   4. Add popular keywords to your headlines
   5. Add more keywords to your descriptions

If you haven’t seen this before, in the ad tab, make sure you have ad strength and ad strength improvements columns added.

You’ll then see your ad strength results for your responsive search ads. Here is an example of what I see for three different ads.

As a reference, each of these three ads has 7 headlines. If I add more, then they will go into review and a new score will populate.

Filtering for Ad Strength

You can filter by ad strength result so that you can easily address any Poor ads to improve their rank.

See Ad Strength Upon Ad Creation

I don’t always create ads in the interface, but often in Editor. However, there is a key advantage of creating Responsive Search ad in the interface. There is an ad strength scoring feature built-in so you can see your score as you build your ad.

Here is an example for you:

While I’d rather have specific details surrounding which combination of ad components works best, at least seeing the two components of ad strength can help me to improve my responsive search ads to get them towards optimal performance. And the more I adjust them based on the improvements recommendations, the better I get at creating them better in the first place.

How are you using ad strength? Have you seen an improvement by incorporating the suggestions? Comment below to share!