Utilizing the Emoji for PPC Campaigns: Benefits & Best Practices

Emojis for Your PPC Campaign

News has recently circulated around the use of emojis within AdWords ad titles after multiple PPC listings have been spotted containing emojis within them.

Google has not officially announced the rollout of emojis within AdWords campaigns, and has taken active measures to remove them from paid listings. But some AdWords users have found ways around this.

Organic listings began using emojis within title tags in early 2017, and users can now conduct Google searches using emojis. Webmasters can track the performance of emoji searches within the Search Console, although there’s a caveat. Webmasters can’t track query level performance of emoji listings without users having typed in the emoji in the first place.

Google recently altered its ad label to make paid listings look more like organic listings. Theoretically, placing an emoji within PPC ads would increase CTRs for most listings and provide Google with more revenue. Regardless, the trend to place emojis within paid listings seems imminent and it could provide positive PPC campaign benefits as a result.

Emoji Use in PPC Campaign Benefits

Emojis are very popular across social media, messaging services, and community forums. Brands can utilize emojis to relate to users by utilizing the same language and emojis they use within their everyday lives. Emojis can be used to visually compliment ad text and communicate the mood of the ad text and landing page.

Numerous case studies have confirmed that emojis improve the CTR of paid listings compared to listings without emojis. Improving the CTR of your PPC ad can improve your Quality Score, lower CPC bids, increase ad positioning, and further improve your CTR as a result. As the competition between PPC ad campaigns matures and different brands begin to establish high ad rankings, utilizing a simple tool like an emoji could provide crucial benefits to startups and small businesses looking to increase their visibility.

Emojis Best Practice

It’s recommended that you conduct A/B testing on two separate ads, monitoring the performance of an ad that includes an emoji within the title and a replicated ad that doesn’t.

Your use of emojis will depend on your industry niche. Entertainment industries, hotels, amusement parks, and retailers could benefit from emojis by providing a fun and visually striking element to their ad title. Industries that require more serious services and in-depth research will hurt their brand by inserting emojis into ad titles by contradicting the mood of the content itself.

To insert an emoji into your ad title, copy and paste an emoji from an emoji website directly into your AdWords ad creation text. This will be no different from setting up any other ad campaign, but tracking the performance may be difficult until a further update is available.

Keep in mind that emojis could potentially affect the use of social share buttons that are unable to translate ad titles with emojis within them. Furthermore, some emojis could be denied by Google. Google has not fully rolled out emojis into ad titles and there exist no metrics or requirements for which types of emojis will be accepted. If your ad titles are denied than you might have to wait or else your account could be flagged by Google.

Moving Forward

The use of emojis within PPC ad titles seems imminent as it provides a significant CTR increase for paid listings containing them, and provides Google with a greater revenue stream. Emojis are a universal language that users of any origin can understand and can be an effective way to relate to users and provide an emotional element to your ad titles. Try it out and see if your ad titles get accepted and see if it improves your campaign performance.